130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash
by FountainPenguin
Summary: Various one-shots related to my FOP headcanons based off a list of 130 Prompts, featuring multiple storylines that occasionally cross with one another as characters and the world are developed and plot holes are sewn tentatively shut. (Written April 2016 - Ongoing) LATEST UPDATE: "Trying Too Hard" - Gary and Betty can't agree whether to keep or sell Camp Learn-A-Torium. Sparks fly.
1. ARC 1 - (1) Excitement

**A/N** \- _130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash_ , also known as the 130 Prompts, is a one-shot series meant to explore and expand upon the canon show content. Some one-shots will cover pre-series events (Ex: Anti-Cosmo's past). Some one-shots are about events that could theoretically have occurred during the series without contradicting canon (Ex: Remy's and Mark's arcs). Some one-shots might be about the future (Ex: Poof and Foop as teenagers), or others may be AUs.

This 'fic contains a lot of in-depth worldbuilding, much of which is based on real world science and ridiculously anthropomorphized insect and bat behaviors. A lot of my worldbuilding is just plain needlessly complicated, because I like to have fun. Some Prompts in this fanfic may be a little dark, uncomfortable, or just really bizarre at times, though I am confident in my T rating instead of M. ( **Update** : I have now rated each Prompt individually, added characters and summaries to each one, and noted if there are "prerequisites" for it! I'm reliable!)

I have a love of animal behavior and magic, which means most of the Prompts focus on the Fairies, Pixies, and Anti-Fairies. The humans and Yugopotamians slip in occasionally (especially during Arc 3), but magical creatures tend to dominate this project.

If this doesn't work for you, then this isn't your kind of fanfic. Know your limits and proceed with care. Please enjoy your stay.

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 **Timeline Note:** _130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash_ jumps up and down the timeline. This is done intentionally to present certain information at certain times, and so I don't have to wait years to write some stuff I'm excited for. I highly recommend reading everything in the order I present it. However, if you wish to read chronologically, the chronologically first piece is Chapter 44, "First Things First". You're gonna be hating life if you try that on your first read, but you could in theory read chronologically if you wanted to.

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 _Summary:_ Sanderson and several pixies take young Gary and Betty to a dangerous amusement park to teach them about the importance of safety.

 _Characters:_ Sanderson, Gary, Betty, Kenny, Longwood, Caudwell, Rosencrantz, assorted pixies, H.P. (Mentioned)

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Whatever" / ?

 _Prerequisites:_ None, but I now have a Gary and Betty backstory 'fic called _Pink and Gray_. This piece takes place between the chapters "Heroes to Goats" and "Camp Wannahurtastranger".

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 **1\. Excitement** (~10 years before Season 1)

 _Year of Sky;_ _Summer of the Pink Star_

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If two human eight-year-olds, one little boy still wearing the chubbiness of toddlerhood around his cheeks, and six pixies crammed into a rickety roller coaster car on such a stifling day, would Jorgen von Strangle flip out? That was the question buzzing about in Sanderson's brain as he watched Gary, Kenny, and Betty run mindless circles around the lonely red picnic table and scrubby trees with little Rosencrantz. All four puffed out and sucked in their flushed cheeks like dirty animals as they strained to tag one another's shoulder blades with their Cheeto-powder fingertips.

Longwood moved his mouth softly as he watched them. Sanderson lifted one ear of his headphones and through gritted teeth forced the words, "I'm sorry, _sir_?"

"I said I'm really not much a fan of the amusement park," Longwood muttered, drumming his fingers on the wood so loudly that it was doubtless scaring off any and every slippery Anti-Fairy in the vicinity. Nor was he much of a fan of children in general. Though orders were orders, babysitting the three scrawny humans was doubtless not the way he'd envisioned spending one of his vacation days beyond the borders of Pixies Incorporated and down below the clouds on Earth. And privately, Sanderson agreed with him. Out loud, however, because it was Longwood, he croaked back, "You wouldn't be".

Even with short sleeves and a lopsided blue and black fan folded out of a park map, it appeared Longwood wasn't in the mood to argue- he must be roasting like a phoenix hen under the collar. Good. Sanderson hoped the clouds cleared and the sun beat down thicker until every pair of hidden pixie wings shriveled up like melon leaves. He plucked up a click beetle crawling between the slats of the picnic table and pinched it between his middle finger and thumb.

The vice president of Pixies Inc. used his pinky to shove his shades up his forehead and fixed Sanderson with an icy stare that really should have melted long before reaching July, if the universe were fair. "Might I ask, why do you always see the need to do that sort of thing? There doesn't appear to be a point and it's simply revolting for the rest of us to watch."

"Why do I do what, Longwood?" Sanderson monotoned back to the younger pixie, pausing and starting his Discman player in bursts without looking and trying to remember if it had a skip button.

"You smeared colorful beetle guts everywhere. Why do you have to hurt things? The insect hasn't acted out against you."

"I don't care for click beetles."

"Well, you ought to." Longwood straightened himself importantly with hands clasped on the table and thumbs up, as though he hovered at the head of a lecture hall. He and about six dozen of their coworkers had inherited that automatic tic from H.P.'s identical genes, but Sanderson hadn't and found both that fact and the body language itself irritating as a result. "The leprechauns have click beetle in their DNA like we have parasitic wasp and fairies have dragonfly, and it wouldn't be polite to kill their patron in front of them. You may as well imagine this were a business meeting and behave yourself, Sanderson."

 _Oh, go kiss a brownie,_ he thought at Longwood, but had been rebuked enough times over the years to hold his tongue.

Even so, Longwood knew him well enough to see the snappish comment ringing in his eyes. He rotated his head approximately twenty-nine degrees to the left, as he tended to. "I'm not weak or flawed because I won't kill bugs. I only follow orders. H.P. has never instructed me to kill without reason, and so I don't."

"Congratulations. What a sacrifice. Do you only relieve yourself in the restroom when the boss stands outside the stall and tells you to do so?"

"Aren't you so bravely the one to talk here, Mr. Separation Anxiety."

That sent Bayard into a rising, "Ooooh, scalded!" further down the table. Sanderson groped for a response, but couldn't hook one. After several awkward seconds (at least, awkward on his side of the bench), he adjusted his shades and said, "Listen, Woody, if you're a closet vegan and aren't going to finish it, can I have the rest of your gelato?"

Longwood shoved the cup and spoon across the table, palm to his sagging cheek. "But isn't that what you do?"

"Mr. Sanderson, can we go back to the bouncy dolphins?" Kenny (fortunately) interrupted then, taking a fistful of Betty's pale blonde pigtails and tugging hard. In response, Gary pushed his chest, and Betty went for the armpits of both boys with jittering fingers. The three collapsed in a heap of snorts and "Stop it"s.

Sanderson rolled the volume of his music down to a warm simmer. "That sounds like a swell idea. Sharp thinking, Kenny- you're on point. Extra crayons for you at dinner tonight. The dolphins are just about the safest ride in the amusement park. We like safety, don't we?"

"Yes sir, Sanderson."

"'Mr. Sanderson', please. Let's go. Quick working feet, working feet, everyone."

"Come on, Rosebud!" Betty and Gary each grabbed one of the little pixie's elbows and scampered off across the grass. Kenny had to get a nudge with Longwood's foot before he realized he ought to follow his sister and newfound friends. Then he came sprinting doggedly back.

"Mr. Sanderson, can I share my crayons with Gary and Betty?"

"Do you want to? They're all yours, for your very own- you won them fairly. Being goody-goody is for fairies. Don't- don't make that crying face- you know I can't stand your sobbing. It's very human. Stop. Kenny- All right, you have permission. Get on with you."

Kenny scampered off. Sanderson placed his too-large hands on his too-large knees and drew himself up to his too-tall, disguised height of five and a half feet and followed in his too-heavy shoes. The others remained at the simple table with their simple sandwiches.

With the exception of Rosencrantz, who at only age nine hundred and fourteen could pass for a scrawny human child so long as he kept his wings tucked under his shirt and didn't wash the glittery dust from his skin, the six pixies looked and felt less like pixies than they ever had before, and it disgusted them. Their gray suits and familiar ties had been exchanged for white t-shirts that exposed pale skin up to the shoulders. Their awkward square faces slightly rounded at the corners. Their black hair ruffled and styled in a variety of ways to keep them from appearing _too_ identical and drawing second glances. They'd utterly discarded their floating caps (and more importantly, the broken six-pointed crowns those pointed caps concealed), and they had all taken to nibbling at their fingernails or sucking on their thumbs as a way to shake off the associated dizziness and keep their focus. Their wings had been temporarily dissolved, which they all kept forgetting- it left them tripping over themselves in a mortifyingly unprofessional manner. Thankfully, the Head Pixie himself wasn't here to witness such a thing.

It was a transformation difficult to maintain, and particularly for an awkward race of beings with a limited grasp over magic in the first place. They were all guzzling water by the bottles and sweating and flushing and panting. Sanderson could feel human lungs tucked in his human chest, both they and his beating human heart struggling to function when crammed up against his fagiggly gland.

Outwardly, the one remaining clue that they didn't belong down here on Earth would be the six pairs of lavender eyes concealed behind six pairs of tinted sunglasses. Eyes were notoriously difficult (and expensive- half a million lagelyn per minute? Not on this pixie's credit!) to shift, so none of them had bothered; they were comfortable with the shades as it was. And anyone close enough to notice the odd color would probably have predicted their identity from a distance anyway. Every magical being worth his salt and silverware could pick up on the cloud of power humming in the air around their ears, but when it came to the humans, Sanderson hoped the flecks of dust on their skin still kept them invisible among the crowds. The Pixies had work to do here today, meticulous plans to carry out.

After ten minutes, Kenny, Gary, Betty, and Rosencrantz came tumbling from their dolphin attraction, dizzy as gophers. The pixie tucked his headphones around his neck for good, released the orange gate, and took a step towards them. Just as he did, a waterfall of nausea made him reel to the left.

Instantly, the three human children abandoned their game of dizzy-tag and rushed to take his hands. "Mr. Sanderson! You're flickering again!"

His hand. He was losing his hand. Or the illusion part of it. Sanderson grimaced as the limb retracted to a stubby size and hid it behind his back. "Three hours straight does begin to wear on you. I need another 'tiny break'. Gary, lend me your jacket and all of you head back to the others at the table by the miniature golf."

Pixie instinct set Rosencrantz moving instantly, but the little humans shifted their scuffed sneakers. Betty bit her lip. When Sanderson prompted her, she said, "Can't we stay with you while you're on break? The other pixies don't like us."

"'cept Rosebud," was Gary's defensive protest.

Sanderson didn't consider it an argument worth having. His right arm was short and awkward, and his left wasn't in much less horrifying condition. It took the remainder of his concentration just to keep the rest of his human disguise together.

Gary, Betty, and Kenny led him towards an array of carnival games (all rigged except the rubber ducks, his pixie instincts could tell) and, in the bushes behind the row of beaten sheds where the coast was clearer, he collapsed in full. With a _ping_ , he melted back into his regular size and shape, three feet two inches tall to the millimeter and square-faced once again. Wasp-like wings arced in full translucent splendor. A pointed gray cap materialized above his head. He curled up on his side among the roots and weeds. Gary dropped his red jacket over him and fluffed the sleeves like a small pillow.

"Are you dead?" Betty asked him after a few minutes. "Please don't be dead. I'm kind of done with dead people."

"Mm… No. My magic lines are still connected like straws to the universal energy field. That's how all magical creatures of about pixie size and body type breathe." After a moment more, Sanderson propped himself on his elbows. "What did you three see at the Novakiin Science Museum with Hawkins yesterday?"

"Um…" She scrunched her entire face the way she typically did when she was straining her brain. Thinking with her head rather than her heart wasn't exactly her strength. "We learned about Santa and Christmas. Fairies call it Krisday sometimes."

"There was a big war. Actually, I think there were like this many big wars." Gary held up all four fingers, and Sanderson wondered which one he was missing- the Sealing War, the Sacred Revolution, the Struggle with The Darkness, the Sunset Divide, or the War of the Angels.

Betty nodded. "Then we looked at the fairy dogs. They're called cozies or somethin'."

"Cù siths. Well, more than one cù sith is 'coin sith'."

"Yeah, what Gary said."

"And rocket ships," Kenny added, flapping his arms. "The tentacle guys have big smarty brains in their rockets."

Sanderson took his right wrist in his left hand and flexed it. Still stung like hot fizzing bubbles. "They still have the Yugopotamian exhibit up on public display? And here I thought the Fairies rather enjoyed stomping those space squids out of their history books."

Gary made another list with his fingers. "We also learned about Cupid and his two brothers. And how the fancy space alligators invented the Snobbish language for everyone in the universe to use. And there was the Fairy Eclipse. And Da Rules."

"And Wanda Winksomething and the dinosaurs."

"Oh, yeah. And the Cherish Jungle. Hawkins says there's a gingerbread cave somewhere in there right next to your Pixie World place. Is that really true, Mr. Sanderson?"

"And dragonflies! Oh, and I liked it when we ate buggers and cheese fries. I really, really like fries."

Gary stuck out his tongue. "Ew, Kenny, those were so gross. The only thing that even tasted a little bit good at that place was the plain bread and the salad and the soy stuff."

Betty scratched her arm as Kenny continued to babble aimlessly about wanting to eat nothing but hamburgers for the rest of his life. "Mr. Sanderson? Will you tell the story about… about how the Head Pixie found us again?"

Sanderson lifted one eyebrow, more because it was the response he had witnessed H.P. exhibit when he was asked such things than because he found himself actually surprised by the question. "Do you all want to hear it?"

The three humans grinned and nodded. Deep down, that disgusted him. It was only a story to them. A game. If they were delighted to hear gruesome tales of their own pasts, perhaps they ought to have been adopted by Anti-Fairies.

"All right. Let me remember. It was probably a Friday afternoon. That morning would be when our magic gets refreshed and is at its strongest, and I think I remember that. The Head Pixie and I happened to be in the area on business. The Kansas sky was very clear and deeply blue. The roads were fairly open. Thomas and Tam Lovell were coming from the east." The finger switched from Betty and Kenny over to Gary. "Your father Quincy, who was bringing you up to your mother's place after what was intended to be and then was your last visit with him, came from the south. Their cars crashed right into each other." He paused, rolling saliva around in his mouth, and then finished with, "Nobody knows why."

And if he had anything to do with it, nobody ever would.

"My dad's car totally beat up your guys's car," Gary announced.

"I am Superman," said Kenny. Again, he flapped his arms in a childish manner. "I flewed far in my car seat. I soared. Like catapultzering."

If Kenny had been either Gary or Betty, Sanderson would have corrected his grammar. But it wasn't important. There were future plans involving Gary and Betty. H.P. had already determined that Kenny wasn't needed.

"Well," he said instead, "we should perhaps be getting back to the others about now. I don't really like to be away from the other pixies and you shouldn't either. When we're with the group, the group protects us."

"Yes, Mr. Sanderson," they chorused. Sanderson withdrew his black and white ballpoint pen from his coat and smashed the star cap with his thumb. A bright _ping!_ splattered across the air, and when the pixelated clouds cleared away, Sanderson was too tall again. His wings flapped once and burst into purple sparkles. He returned Gary's jacket and climbed to his feet.

"Come on, now." They began walking. As they went, Betty reached up to take his hand. Sanderson pulled it back. "I need that, actually."

"Sorry." She held Kenny's hand instead.

Back at the picnic table, they were greeted only by Rosencrantz and Wilcox, who had a sandwich-shaped backpack and Gummi Worms sitting in front of them, respectively. Sanderson checked the surroundings, the trees, a nearby gift shop, and even under the table for the others before he cautiously asked. In response, Wilcox smirked an evil smirk.

"Hey, human kiddy-buds. Pop on out from behind Uncle Sanders- don't be shy like a lot of brownies. You guys want to play a little guessing game? Here goes: how many shrunken pixies can you fit in a gift shop backpack?"

"Seven?" Kenny guessed.

"Try more like three."

Sanderson cracked a mirthless smile when Wilcox pulled the zipper open. "Hello, Longwood."

"This is humiliating," the company vice president muttered back, crossing his right leg over the left and folding his arms in a huff. Evidently, not even he could maintain human form for very long without a break. Bayard was squeezed beside him, chewing on a water bottle and wearing Longwood's pointed hat, and Sanderson could just make out Caudwell crumpled at the bottom of the pile by his long fingernails.

Wilcox clucked his tongue. "If the rest of you would exercise your fagiggly glands regularly, like _moi_ , you wouldn't be having this problem." He swung the pack over his shoulders, to the grunts of his coworkers inside. "Where are we off to next? The merry-go-round? The swinging boat?"

"Can we ride the bigger rides now?" Betty asked, clasping her hands.

"Oh, can we? Please? Please?"

"The biggest rides in the whole park!"

Kenny shrank backwards. "Big kid rides? I dunno…"

Instantly, Betty and Gary were on him with hugs. "We'll protect you, Kenny."

"Lots of people ride big roller coasters."

"I'll hold your hand the whole time."

Wilcox glanced at Sanderson, neutral-faced. "Are you ready for this?"

"Yeah!" the two older kids cheered, thinking the question was directed towards them.

Sanderson hesitated at least as much as Kenny was. "The big kid rides might be too scary for the two- er, three of you."

"No, we can do it!"

"Yeah, we didn't die in the crashing cars! We lived!"

Kenny swallowed. "I wanna go with my sister. Can I? Please?"

"You'll have lots of fun, Kenny."

"Yeah, and you'll get to sit with us."

"… Really, those rides aren't very safe at all."

" _Please_?" Gary stretched his green eyes wider than half-dollars. "We'll fill out paperwork."

"We'll wash clothes with Rosebud."

"We'll eat all our yummy soy."

"We'll reorganize the files in the basement with Mr. Keefe."

"We'll cook pancakes for all of the pixies every day."

"Oh, oh! And draw pictures of bugs! On the hands you shake with! Can I go with them too?"

Wilcox continued with the patient staring, now with one sharp black eyebrow lifted almost an entire centimeter above his shades. Sanderson bit his lip. "All right. Not because you said 'Please' - begging is desperate and shameful - but because we came all this way and bought you entrance passes to the park for the day, and making use of them is most cost-effective."

Betty and Gary exchanged, _Sure it is_ glances over Kenny's tufted blond hair.

"Only, let's wait a few minutes for the others to pull themselves together again. They wanted to go with us." He nodded towards the restrooms. "The three of you, see if you need to go. We'll decide which of us are coming on which ride with you."

The three humans nodded and ran off. "Gary," Sanderson called, "drakes to the left. Damsels to the right."

Gary skidded to a stop and shifted his route to follow Kenny rather than Betty. Sanderson waited several seconds after they had gone before he rotated back around to face Wilcox, plucking at the tip of his thin collar. "So… H.P. still wants us to do this?"

Wilcox had been replaced by a fluffy lavender-furred rabbit with long black ears and exactly six white whiskers. He upturned both forepaws in a shrug. The three pixies from Rosencrantz's backpack were peeking out of it now, though still in the undersized, hardly-a-foot-tall forms that Wilcox had forced them into. They clung to one leg of the picnic table, wasp wings flat to their backs. From there, Longwood tipped down his shades. "Are you having second thoughts, Sanderson?"

Sanderson gazed down at the too-small pixie from his too-tall height. "Of course not. I know my duties. I was simply checking to ensure that you were keeping up with the boss as is your job and that we hadn't missed a sudden change in plans."

They all fell quiet as a couple of humans walked along the nearby pebbled path. Magic from the energy field clustered around magical beings, mostly invisible to human eyes or else rendering itself as shimmering purple dust, but not at all invisible to touch or smell. Even as the six pixies watched uncertainly, Sanderson could hear one of them comment that the wafting breeze carried the scent of sizzling scrambled eggs, and possibly brown sugar oatmeal.

Rosencrantz cleared his throat. "Are you really going to take them on the bigger rides with you, Longwood?"

"That is my intention, yes."

Bayard clapped his hands. "Let's start off simple, with the bumper cars. I've wanted to ride the bumper cars since they invented bumper car driver's licenses." Then he stopped. "I mean. If we have to. For the kids."

Sanderson rounded on him, crouching so he could glare under the table. "We're not making them ride the bumper cars, smoof."

Bayard looked puzzled for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Right. Duh."

"Yes." Longwood licked his lips. "I've decided we'll do it on the mine carts. For starters, at least. It's dark, and the cart can seat six. We can fill it up and there won't be any other witnesses about. Caudwell and I will go with Garrett, Elizabeth, Kenneth, and Sanderson."

Caudwell nodded, but Sanderson snapped to attention. "You're… actually inviting me to be in the same vicinity as you? … By choice? Without a bonus?"

"Don't get a swelled head. It's why we brought you at all. You have to go. Aside from Rosebud, you're the only one they like." Longwood didn't sound particularly upset about it. Or particularly pleased, but, well.

"Oh, come on," Bayard complained. "Why'd you even bring me along if you were just going to boot me off?"

Turning his head, Longwood met him with a level stare. "This is a serious matter, for serious pixies."

"I can totally be serious like you guys! Caudwell, tell me this doesn't seem like my most serious face ever." Bayard grabbed his coworker by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes, but couldn't hold his straight expression and dissolved in awkward laughter. Caudwell turned his head away and mouthed ' _Help me_ ' in Sanderson's direction. Sanderson shrugged. He liked Bayard. He just didn't… _like_ Bayard. They got on fine together so long as Bayard's eternally-cheerful teasing was targeted on literally anybody else. But, that was how it went with most people.

"Bayard," Longwood began again, "it's hot out and I'm losing my patience. Much more of this and your presence alone might send me tingle-fritzy with annoyance. You and Rosie-"

"Are you sure that _annoyance_ is why you'll probably go tingle-fritzy tonight?"

The color drained from Longwood's face. "I didn't make plans to take Naelita to Ivory Wand and Comet Blood when we get back. Don't spread rumors to H.P. that I did. I don't kiss damsels during work hours- you know this. You all know this, right?"

Bayard took his mouth off the water bottle again. "Who said anything about smooching your girlfriend? I was referring to the fact that you'll probably be slumped on a stool at the Anthill straight after work, crying your pacifist problems away into a creamy orange soda after what's gonna happen here in about twenty minutes. Self-incrimination burn! I'm so busting you. Have fun on laundry duty with Rose."

"Bayard, I swear to the great fountain Kiiloëi-"

"Also, I stole your jingly star cap while we were snuggling in the backpack and it kind of bothers me that you haven't said anything about why I'm wearing a hat on my hat."

Sanderson shook his head. "Really, now what would H.P. say if word got back that his vice president could be found walking about in public with his crown showing?"

Longwood's hand flew to his floating crown's broken and exposed points. "Mister Bayard, I am legally required to treat you with respect in public, but you can't stop me from privately loathing you, and I _will_ 'accidently' leave you behind if you try me. Give me that!"

"You want it, shortstuff? Sandy, if you can hear me up there, catch and bolt at fairy speed!"

That was mean, Sanderson thought as the balled-up scrap of gray fabric landed in his open palm. Longwood would excuse Bayard's actions because he'd picked on everyone equally for the last two hundred and fifty thousand years, but Sanderson was Longwood's go-to scapegoat and would definitely be getting his paycheck docked if he didn't cooperate. He had little choice but to crouch his ungainly body and hand the hat back to Longwood, whose eyes had flushed behind his shades. Longwood stood there, clutching it and not moving. The hundred or so red-brown freckles on his cheeks and nose and neck seemed to burn.

"Only I am permitted to wear the star hat," he finally managed. He fitted it on his crown again with a series of tinkling, clinking noises. "Bayard, this is exactly why you won't be coming. I'll be bringing your name up with H.P. in my closing report." (Pointless threat- What was H.P. going to do, disown his best marketer?) "You and Rosencrantz are to remain on lookout for pestering Fairies. Keep their nosy fingers away at any cost. We're relying on you for cover. If necessary, you and Wilcox will join the team on the Egyptian tomb ride, or perhaps the witch's tower. Kenneth is of no use to us here. As per the Head Pixie's orders, I'll… I'll do what needs to be done with him."

"So we're off, then. Rosie! Here, boy!"

Rosencrantz had been staring towards the restrooms with a furrowed brow. At his name, he jumped and bashed his head on the underside of the picnic table. Bayard patted it before spotting an apparent human-free opening and sprinting along the walking path. Rosencrantz chased him on stumbling feet, pulling off his shirt, and they spread their wings and jumped. Just in time. A few seconds later, a whole busload of humans wearing identical green jackets around their waists meandered past on their irritatingly-slow way to nowhere.

Caudwell crossed his arms. He was a bricklayer when up in Pixie World and a therapist at Wish Fixers besides that, and clearly far more comfortable in his T-shirt and jeans than his fellows were. "Are you sure you're able to manage Kenny, Longwood? Not just physically - no one's questioning that - but emotionally. Do you want to talk about it?"

"H.P. specifically requested that I do it myself, and so I will follow orders."

While Sanderson and Wilcox (and possibly Longwood himself) rolled their eyes, Caudwell reached out his hand and took Longwood's shoulder. "Okay. Then I believe you. Let's go."

Longwood removed his shades. "Physical touch goes against protocol. And, I've worked hard to make it abundantly clear to everyone that I'm interested in _damsels_."

Caudwell put up his hands and muttered an, " _I'm sorry for the sad life you live that causes you to automatically make such assumptions even towards a drake who literally shares all your identical genetics and is scarcely five hundred years younger and raised in the same household,_ " sort of apology as Gary popped out of the boys' restroom and hollered for Betty. Sanderson found himself staring up at a single bristled, pale cloud hovering above distant treetops. Through clenched teeth, he managed to force out the steady gray words, "I don't particularly see why we need to hurt them."

Longwood was unflinching as he returned his shades to his nose. "You started this, Sanderson. Introducing them to magic was all your idea. H.P. only mended the flaws in your plan and handed back the improved script. He expects you to finish the project as you were instructed to."

"Yes, and if it's his will, then I will follow orders without hesitation. You know I will. However, my instructions come from the top. If you hold on a moment and keep an eye on the kids when they come back out, I think I'm going to find a phone and call H.P. just to ensure that he truly-"

"Is that insubordination?" Longwood flared his wings and kicked off from the ground. In an instant, his ballpoint pen was out of his pocket and pointed at Sanderson so the star on its cap hovered an inch from his throat. "May I _remind_ you, Sanderson, that I'm the one wearing the vice president hat. Not you."

Sanderson gazed at the younger (not to mention much smaller, at least from this too-tall height) drake without speaking, without blinking, and after a couple seconds spent pupil-wrestling, Sanderson took a step backwards and Longwood lowered the pen. He turned around, sweeping those same lavender eyes across the gathered pixies.

"All right. Let's go make a few little kids cry."

When Gary and Betty had joined them near the table and Sanderson had finally gone to fetch Kenny, then Caudwell, Wilcox, and Longwood shifted into their human disguises once again. "Where's the tall pixie with the little mustache and the gel spikes he puts in his hair when the Head Pixie isn't around?" Betty asked suspiciously.

"Is he going to hit me with a codfish again?"

"And Rosie?" asked Kenny, hugging his sister's arm.

"It's six to a mine cart and there are eight of us, so Bayard took Rosencrantz to ride something else. We'll meet up with them later."

Gary lit up at once. "We get to ride the mine carts?"

"If you want to," Wilcox called from up the path. "Hop along."

As the children whooped and rushed ahead, Sanderson felt a finger tap his shoulder. "Sanderson?"

"I'm not particularly interested in either damsels or drakes, Caudwell. Oh, don't give me that disgusted look. You never come inside Headquarters and I honestly think I haven't spoken to you for a couple centuries. Let us have our little joke because we know it bothers you. That's the curse you suffer for being a pixie raised for five hundred years by a selkie who so valued physical touch. What's shaking the dust off your wings?"

"Oh, why do you have to hurt things?" the younger pixie muttered, but went on a little more cautiously with, "Are you okay with this? With…" He motioned towards Gary and Betty with his hand. Well, Kenny too. "I mean, they're basically _yours_ after that court case."

And what a shame it was that the Fairy Council had refused to lift the wish-blocker from the three humans, just because they'd been legally adopted by a pixie. Being allowed to directly use magic in response to their wishes would have made everything a great deal easier.

"Of course I am. This is the entire reason we took an interest in them to begin with. Anyway, we've come too far to slam on the brakes now. H.P. is counting on us. You ought to go back to fretting over Longwood. And no, I don't want to sit down and have a core-to-core about it."

Caudwell just held his hands clasped near his chest as Sanderson pushed past him.

And yet, for some reason, after they had pulled a string and perhaps flicked a wand in the direction of Kenny's height to get all six of them up to the front of the roller coaster line, Sanderson crouched down with his arms folded around his stomach. "Let me get a look at you three."

Betty and Gary exchanged curious frowns. Then their cart ground to a halt, and the tiny metal safety gates swung open. Yipping and cheering, the pair scrambled over one another to sit in the front.

"Looks like there's a little patch of trees over there on the left with a nice view of the exit," Wilcox said. "I'll meet you lot there when everything's done." Sanderson watched him melt into a blue jay (purple jay?) after he'd hopped the fence and ducked behind the nearest patch of shrubbery.

"Come on, Kenny." Caudwell twitched his shoulder like he intended to offer his wing to the smaller boy, then recognized his mistake and wrapped an arm around his shoulders instead. "You can sit in the middle row with me, right there in front of Longwood."

Sanderson pressed the lap bar down as soon as he'd sat down in the cart, and Longwood cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he said, and once it had been raised, Longwood joined him. He turned his palms outward and breathed out a hot stream of air. Silence.

"You're going to bail," muttered Sanderson, placing his fist to his left cheek as the coaster lurched into action.

"Just you wait."

"I rather imagine I'll be waiting for awhile."

"Would you like to be waiting for your job awhile, too?"

"After you watch them struggle through half a ride on this thing, you won't have the guts."

"Nymphs and damsels first."

They dove underground. Complete blackness enveloped them. Kenny yelped his second thoughts aloud while Betty and Gary cheered from the front. It almost covered the _ping_ that sprang up from Caudwell's general area.

Go time.

Sanderson did not shut his eyes and did not look away. And not purely because it wouldn't have mattered in the dark. He pressed his thumb to the large star-shaped button atop his own pen.

 _Ping!_

That was supposed to be a tiger. Judging from the noises, only Gary noticed its lashing claws before it slipped away. Sanderson used a second _ping_ to snap a solid 90% of its magic back into his starpiece; the rest couldn't be saved even when recaptured so soon and would dissolve. And besides the tax and expense benefits, it also spared the humans who would come riding after. Not that it was a pixie's job to ensure the existence of magic stayed below human notice.

 _Ping_! Horse hooves crashed across the metal track like storm clouds.

 _Ping_! Three geese honked and flared their wings as the cart whipped around a corner and took another dive. Thanks, Caudwell.

 _Ping_! The floor of the cart dropped away beneath their feet.

 _Ping_! The track rerouted slightly to add a few more whipping turns.

 _Ping_! Chunks of moist rock and dusty ceiling clattered on the tracks from above. The cart jarred and scraped against the wall in a shower of golden sparks.

 _Ping_! Dragon fire enveloped the tunnel, scorching decorative wooden beams. Glancing to his right before the glow was swallowed up, Sanderson watched Longwood hold his pen, sparking with magic, sparking with blue electricity, to the back of Kenny's head.

He hesitated.

Sanderson raised his eyebrows and pressed the button again. _Ping!_ Betty screeched as a wolf leapt at her from the shadows, jaws snapping, drool spattering, and buried its fangs in the seat about three inches from her ear. By the dim light of several lanterns now appearing along the wall in bursts, Longwood withdrew the pen. Brought it forward. Covered his mouth. Held out his hand again.

 _You can't do it,_ Sanderson groaned in his head, and almost like telepathy, he read the answer in Longwood's bitten lip: _I'm a pacifist_.

Well. Somebody here had to take charge of things.

"Won't H.P. be displeased to hear this," drawled the older pixie and, reaching forward with his own starpiece, delivered a sharp electric shock all across Kenny's body. Longwood did not flinch, but the staring mutely ahead told Sanderson everything. He lifted his pen and, with a "Do what you have to," _ping_ ed both himself and the injured child out of there.

Up in the air, dissolved in a mass of particles, Sanderson had only milliseconds to make a decision. The safety feature embedded in his starpiece would of course prevent him from landing _in_ something like a brick wall or tree bark or a random bystander, but he still wanted to avoid human notice. Even thickly-layered magic dust couldn't offer cover in the face of a direct double-take.

Wilcox the jay was perched where he'd promised among the trees around the corner from the crowded line of humans. Which was good, since that was the location Sanderson had been imagining when he'd flicked his pen and, well, he couldn't exactly change course now. When his feet were maybe two inches from the ground, he and Kenny burst into their physical shapes again. The human was larger than the pixie, and Sanderson was forced to put him down.

Kenny wasn't in the best of conditions. Patches of his strawberry-blond hair had been singed to his sooty scalp with dragon fire. Something with heavy claws had slashed along his arm. His clothing was rumpled and loose about his thin shoulders and skeletal form. His skin had turned red in places like he'd broken out in hives, but that was a frequent side effect of coming into contact with magical beings or objects and Sanderson blew it off. He was more interested in finding out if the boy had survived the electricity.

So Sanderson righted him, and Wilcox even flew down from his branch to check up with them before zipping off. Moaning, Kenny clutched Sanderson's shirt with feeble fingers.

"What… what happened? All my whole body hurts bad."

Sanderson let out a sigh through his nose. Alive. "I did warn you that the big kid rides were dangerous."

With a whimper, Kenny pressed his face into Sanderson's shirt. Crying was the human defensive behavior, just as injured pixies reacted to pheromones in each other's blood when one of them got hurt. It was nothing he could control. Sanderson could only sit stiffly with one hand placed between Kenny's shoulder blades as the sobbing went on.

"Um. See, here comes your sister."

The mine cart rolled up from the tunnel and halted with a mechanical squeal. Fortunately, it looked good and fresh. Glaze-eyed Gary and Betty sat in front, clutching one another's shoulders. Shivering. Caudwell leaned stoically behind them, holding the safety bar with both hands, but Longwood sat with his face buried in his. Wilcox had _ping_ ed in to take the role of a ruffled but otherwise identical Sanderson, and someone had projected an image of Kenny into the seat beside Caudwell.

The attendants helped everyone out with patient smiles and vaguely-concerned voices, wished them all well, and didn't spare any of them another glance. As they all descended the ramp, Caudwell jabbed the star on his pen into the neck of imaginary Kenny, and he vanished in a blocky scattering of purple and white. Sanderson returned to his larger form so they would see him waving and holding the boy among the trees.

"Mr. S-Sanderson?" Gary choked out. He hadn't let go of Betty, even as they walked. "W-what are you doing out here? Didn't you come with us?"

"This ride was extremely unsafe. Kenny got hurt and I had to use magic to get him off."

With a squeal, Betty untangled herself from Gary and came tripping over her own feet to his side. "Kenny? Kenny!"

Sanderson pulled himself away, but not quickly enough. With two human ten-year-olds tackling his legs, it was all he could do to keep his focus on maintaining his human disguise.

"I'll be back," Longwood muttered, shoving past them and bolting off in the direction of the restrooms.

Betty succeeded in pushing Gary aside and at last took her hands away from his face. "I sh-shouldn't have made you go, Kenny. I'm sorry. Please, you h-have to get better." Throwing herself over him, she began to sob, "I can't lose you too!"

"Can't you help him with magic and stuff, Mr. Sanderson?" Gary asked, tugging quietly on the hems of his sleeves.

"Yes, I can save him. This time. We were lucky." Sanderson placed his hand beneath Betty's chin and tilted it upwards. As she continued to sniffle and blink, he murmured, "Should I take you back to your bubble where everything is safe and you won't get hurt?"

"Uh-huh." Then she said the words: "I'll never ride another roller coaster again."

Wilcox leaned forward, his hands vaguely flickering with the effort of holding himself together. "The real problem was the lack of safety, Betty. In fact, after a ride like that, I'm starting to think that a lot of this park is unsafe."

"We shouldn't have come."

"This place should be illegal."

"They ought to have left it as a grassy park with twisting walkways and pretty fountains where you could lie on your backs and count the stars."

"Children like you deserve to grow up in a safer world."

"Betty." Gary wrapped her in a new hug. "Betty, stop crying. It's okay. We'll always be safe forever now."

Sanderson loosened his arms and forced all three children to stand up on wobbly feet. "I'm going to use the restroom myself," he said to Caudwell, and then to the children, "When I come back, we'll go and find Bayard and Rosebud, and then we'll grab a scoop of any ice cream flavor you want. And Skittles. There will definitely be Skittles."

Gary ignored him, tightening his grip on Betty, who ignored him and tightened her grip on Kenny. Without looking back, Sanderson tugged down his T-shirt to smooth its wrinkles and walked with quick steps towards the restrooms. He hoped it was equipped with paper towel dispensers and not automatic hand dryers- he had some rubbing in to do.

Longwood perched on the edge of the nearest toilet bowl, shoes dangling just above the water, head bowed and perfectly-combed black hair shining. The white stall door hung wide open and obvious, yet he'd dropped his human form entirely. Dull-colored wasp wings drooped behind him.

After using a spark of magic to lock the big wooden door, Sanderson dropped his disguise too. It felt brilliant to sweep his wings up, down, and up again as far as they could stretch before finally breaking into the rapid windmill motion that lifted him from the ground. Hovering there, he cocked his left fist on his hip the way he'd often seen H.P. do. "And you thought I would be the one to hesitate."

"Lay off, Sanderson, or you'll get laid off," Longwood muttered back. His crown gleamed like a star; he twisted his gray cap between his fists. "The War of the Angels broke all of us in one way or another. I have my… thing. Robin couldn't last in the kitchens. Hawkins has his awkward hand. Wilcox suffered fagigglyne withdrawal something awful. Cupid went cross-eyed. We lost a prince, a king, a castle, a treasury, a government, respect, our kinship with the anti-pixies… even H.P. actively hated that place. Speaking of which, I seem to remember that your limp never quite healed in full."

Sanderson glanced down at his right leg, and specifically at the back part beneath his knee where his boss had once blasted him with a bolt of lightning (among other things) during his attempt to force the wild Anti-Sanderson out of commission. Then, with a sniff, he folded his arms. "Be that as it may, it's completely irrelevant. The duty of a pixie is to follow orders without question or pause. You failed out there today. And it's not anywhere near the first time. If you can't manage to follow simple procedures, perhaps you are not qualified for this position and ought to retire."

Longwood finally turned around. The tiny star on the tip of his cap jingled when he did. He'd pushed his shades down to his chin, and his lavender eyes had deepened into stinging violet again. "If you were capable of keeping up with all the things I manage on a daily basis, then you would have been assigned the position in the first place. As it happens, H.P. would take my flaws over yours. He trusts _me_ never to turn against him, even if I believed I were ordered to, and _even though_ my freckles make me a gyne instead of a drone like you. I'm still not so belly-in-the-dirt desperate for his approval that I'd attempt to kill him just because he said so. I've never been so stumped for ideas that I flit about drawing pictures of clowns and pink elephants whenever I'm left to my own devices. I'm not so directionless without the boss that there's a defense protocol in place to take out _me_ should I lash out in panic and fury after he goes dusty someday. That's the reason why I'm vice president, and you'll never amount to anything more than head of the complaints department. H.P. selected me to wear this hat, and his word alone ought to be enough to end this discussion."

A direct quote, those last parts, and the response that would, indeed, have likely been slapped around their ears had the Head Pixie himself been here to witness their scuffle. Some human tried the restroom door and, puzzled when it didn't open, wandered off again.

"… Gary, Betty, and Kenny like me, even if me and my unrecognized talents are stuck in a dead-end filler job forever."

Longwood snuck a good laugh out of that one.

* * *

 ***** UPDATE:** I would like to clarify something. A Fairy religion known as Daoism is mentioned later in this 'fic. It is named after the Daoine Sìth, who are nature spirits described in Scottish folklore. Followers of this religion believe Fairy and Anti-Fairy counterparts will become a single being in the afterlife. This is known as the Daoine form. H.P. is Daoist; Anti-Cosmo is not.

These beliefs have NO connection to Taoism / Daoism as we know them in our world, and I should have chosen a different name for this religion to avoid confusion. I humbly apologize.


	2. (12) Second Chance

_Summary:_ A month after "School of Crock", Poof and Foop have a discussion about life on the teeter-totter.

 _Characters:_ Poof, Foop

 _Rating:_ K

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "No Way Out" / "Denial"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **12\. Second Chance** (Post "School of Crock")

 _Year of Fire; Autumn of the Thawed Calendar_

* * *

The preschool balanced on a narrow chunk of rocky planet, with such a thin atmosphere that the current gray clouds scurried on their fluffy little ways against a backdrop of blackness and gleaming stars. Fortunate, then, that none of its students actually needed to breathe, and the occasional human visitor could scrounge together just enough oxygen to make it through school hours, provided that excited screaming or anxiety attacks were not involved.

The recess bell had rung salvation almost five minutes ago. The playground slide brimmed thickly with bustling bodies. The two swings were overwhelmed. Little hands scrawled chalky swirls over pavement, led by Sammy, the unanimously-elected captain of the mural collaboration. _Where do I live?_ was the topic they'd been assigned. They'd started their work there beneath the two struggling saplings the day before, and they were determined to finish before the gentle rain washed their efforts away for good.

Poof would not be joining them. Sure, his parents might get a phone call and he'd be gently scolded, and Timmy would pat him on the head and teach him how to emotionally distance himself from the terrors of the world, but... no. No, he could never bring himself to join them there on _that_ side of the building- hadn't yesterday, and wouldn't at this time tomorrow should that be an option. Perhaps on a brighter afternoon, perhaps during the next break period when the sunshine would be beating down from the west. But now, he lingered on the playground with the last crumbs of his lunch biscuit clenched in his tiny hand, and he watched them. Even Goldie was over there, hard at work sketching twisting tunnels and spider-legged roots across the mural's underground.

Sigh.

Fairies had never been meant to keep alone. Their instincts drove them to seek close-knit and long-lasting companionship among their own immortal kind, or humans if no satisfying matches could be found. Or something like that. Poof wasn't particularly liking his remaining options, but all were better than floating there aimless and on his own.

And, he consoled himself as he set his long wings thrumming, if fairies hated to feel abandoned, might at least a hint of that nature have crept into another species, too? Might he even receive a grateful welcome for his efforts?

"Hey, Foop. You're looking a little _bluer_ than normal. You need someone to teeter-totter with you?"

Foop - no less aimless and on his own than his counterpart, of course - had been examining something in his hands that glinted like metal. But at Poof's voice, he started and shoved the contraption into the front pocket of his shiny black school uniform. "Oh, well, just look who it is. Cut to the chase, lollipop. What do you want?"

"I want to play on the teeter-totter," Poof said, forcing himself to suppress the growl in his voice, "and you're on it. You were here first and fair is fair, so if you care to join me then you're welcome to. If not, I'm sure Sammy Sweetsparkle or seriously anybody else would be happy to take your place."

The little anti-fairy considered this, and considered this, stroking his tiny scrap of goatee. Poof loathed that goatee. It only reminded him of his father's natural inability to grow facial hair, and that such a trait had probably ended up in his own genes. A magical mustache simply wouldn't be the same.

After the longest staring contest in the lives of either party, Foop grunted his consent. Gratefully, Poof floated up to land on the opposite end of the board. He had hardly taken hold of the handle when Foop kicked off the ground, jerking Poof downward. His jaw slammed into the bar. Foop broke into a cackle as the purple fairy straightened himself out.

"Ooh, yes! Now, if that didn't feel so delightfully energizing!"

"Why? Just… why, Foop?" Poof spurred the teeter-totter into action, at a slightly more reasonable speed.

"My dearest apologies, friend."

"I'm not your friend. And I never, ever want to be your friend."

Foop unfolded and withdrew his bat wings as he shrugged. "If you don't like who I am, don't hold that against me. I'm only what you made me into."

"I was just under three months old! You can't hold that against me- it's not _my_ fault you swallowed my instinct to lash out at my opposite on sight when you were just lifesmoke."

"Three months? My, how time does fly! And how very fortunate I am that you lost it, or I never should have been allowed to come to this delightful little educational establishment alongside you." Foop didn't blink as the pair exchanged ups and downs in silence. Then, accusingly, "Seriously, why are you really here?"

Poof tightened his shoulders. "Can we stop assuming I'm playing with you because I want to?"

"Forgive _me_ , Mr. Popular. What's suddenly less appealing about your real friends?"

On automatic, Poof glanced towards the far side of the playground, where Sammy and so many of the others had gathered on the shady side of the schoolhouse to finish their chalk drawings. Between the cluster of ornamental trees and the cloudy sky, the flag whipping on its pole over their heads like heavy beating wings, like the creeping rustle of feet… No, no.

His eyes zipped back to Foop just as quickly. Not quickly enough. Foop cocked his head. Which, since his head made up most of his body, nearly overbalanced him from the teeter totter.

"You know, I always forget that you're afraid of the dark."

"And you hate ninjas and the flickering of the TV."

"Fair," Foop acknowledged, "but that blinking light would strike terror in anyone's core."

It was Poof's turn to shrug. They passed another few beats without speaking.

"Your birthday's coming up in February."

"I know."

"I got you a present."

"Knowing you, Foop, I think I'd rather you kept it."

Foop squinted. "Aren't you at least a shred or two excited? Yeesh. Who brushed the dust off your wings?"

He got a tight-lipped smile in return. "I think you took the part of me that gets super-duper excited about a lot of things when you showed up to clone my core. You're always super happy or super upset about stuff. I'm that range in between. I think mostly I'm equally excited about all the stuff that ever happens ever. Just sometimes I don't show it in the same way you do."

"But Father Time set the world back to normal. You and I can age again. Sometime soon, you won't be imprisoned in that rotund exoskeleton of yours anymore, and I will no longer be forced to suffer through the crushing struggle of functioning throughout daily life while encased in my stunted form equipped only with such tiny arms and feet, and I will be entirely capable of using my powers to bring DEATH to all those who have crossed me and whom you hold dear. And you, Poof, while I cannot strike you down without wiping myself into oblivion, are DOOMED! There are hundreds of fates worse than death, and I have studied science immensely ever since I left my smoky form behind and and ascended to this present state, and you have NO idea what is coming for you, purple puffball, and it is going to fill you with DREAD and FEAR beyond the utmost reachings of your wildest sane imagination!"

"Anti-Goldie's staring," Poof told him without removing his hand from his cheek. "You might wanna flip on back to that Hiccup personality she likes so much before she starts hitting us with her boomerangs again."

"Anti- _Marigold_. And you're supposed to call her Kelsia. And, you ought to know that I stuffed Hiccup back down in therapy. Although admittedly he has been getting a tad restless in there ever since my Terrific Twos day." Still, Foop, who had released the teeter-totter to fly up and punch the air as he hollered, sat himself down. The board bumped against the ground and he didn't push off again, but only stared upwards at the unmoving fairy perched atop the other end. "Poof, do you ever lie awake and wonder just how you and I shall turn out when we're much older? I'll bet even with the anti-fairy limitations, I can make the inevitable curls in my hair so much more appealing to look at than yours."

Poof snorted. "I barely think past the four o'clock showing of Looky's Lunchbox. Never gets old. Season 2 begins today."

"I honestly can't tell whether that comment was intended to be sarcastic or wasn't, but I digress. I for one plan to pursue the worldly sciences. Biology, chemistry, physics, mechanics- I'll master all of it and use it against you while you're trotting about teaching yourself your adorable little magic tricks. I'll take over from my father as soon as my powers are strong enough to really put a blur in his monocle. I trust you'll do the same. Two young princes, locked in battle until the universe ceases to exist. Doesn't that idea ring quite loudly in your ears with the utmost enjoyment?"

The fairy let the teeter-totter rest in the dirt again a moment more than necessary, and Foop pedaled his feet against air. "I'm not exactly some sort of blueblooded royal like you are. I live in a suburban fishbowl."

"I'm a count's son, actually. And technically that's a pretty title for show- my father is a tad more of a general. I'm still heir to something, at least."

Thinking through that, Poof squinted. "Foop, do your own _parents_ even love you? I've never, ever seen them with you or doing anything supportive since your dad had that spaz attack during parent-teacher conferences."

" _Pouring salt all over the classroom_ was a nasty trick, and you know it!"

Poof tilted his hand back and forth. "Ehih, what can I say to that? A love for revenge is one of the few traits we both share deep down. In fact, isn't that even our exact core?"

Foop shot a sigh out between tight fangs. He let Poof thud against the hard soil once more. " _Why_ are you _here_? Honestly?"

"You looked pathetic over here all by yourself."

"I rather enjoy being alone!"

"On the teeter-totter?"

"When it's available. I am rather fond of the sandbox, except when I sit for too long in it and it makes my diaper itchy with rashes."

Poof tightened his grip on the bar. "Maybe I just believe that sometimes people need a fourteenth chance."

"Whatever happened to the second chance?"

"You tried to make my mama drop me through a portal to another universe where I would be frozen in suspended animation for the rest of existence."

"Oh, please- Are you still going off about that? You're so naive, Poof, and everyone just lets you play that 'cute and innocent' card whenever you bat your lashes, just because fame was handed to you on a silver platter full of rump roast. I actually had to work for my popularity. And don't you dare make as though you wouldn't have done the same if that little play date had been your idea."

Poof's wings fluttered so fast, they buzzed. "No, I _wouldn't_ have, Foop. That wouldn't even cross my mind! I'm a fairy. I'm good! By the very definition of my species, I'm _better_ than you are."

Foop wrinkled his nose. "Well, that's a little self-righteous, don't you think?"

Simmering, Poof released the handle of the teeter-totter at the top of its next bounce and floated upwards. "Okay. I'm done here."

"Wait!" Foop let go as well, but stayed seated. Near-seated, anyway- his natural instinct was to flap his wings and keep himself lightly in the air. "I can't work the teeter-totter on my own!"

Poof set his jaw. "You have a baby bottle full of magic. Figure it out yourself. Now, if you will so kindly excuse me, it looks like a swing has just been made available."

"But-"

"That's it, Foop. You and I can continue this little talk of ours over apple chunks at snack time. But to be perfectly honest, I really don't see why you'll bother. I'm the fairy. I'm the primary counterpart. My species are above yours. That's just the way the little universe works. And no matter how hard you throw a fit, that's just the way it's always gonna be."


	3. (38) Weakening

_Summary:_ Anti-Cosmo is having problems with his fagiggly gland, and Anti-Wanda attempts to comfort him from the neighboring cell.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Wanda, Anti-Cosmo, Jorgen

 _Rating:_ K

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Try Your Luck" / "Stand Alone"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **38\. Weakening** ("The Gland Plan")

 _Year of Sky; Autumn of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

That Jorgen von Strangle feller leaned on his real big wand thing as he skimmed his eyes up and down and around someplace. "And then, I suppose you want another sandwich for dinner? With extra tomatoes and thick white cream cheese, and spider legs between the lettuce leaves?"

Anti-Wanda licked her dry lips and nodded. So, with a shrug, Jorgen pointed his giant wand, and some weird red bottle thing and a completely normal, dull, boring, average hotdog appeared on a plate with a pink _poof_ of dust. Maybe it had been invented by the gray people. "You realize those newt eyeballs will go straight to your hips."

She stretched her clawed hand between the bars and flapped it as he started to move away down the prison hall. "Mr. Jarhead? Could I also gets one a' them nice tall ladders in here? These purdy red pajamas ya put me in make it so my wings don't work, an' it's been real hard tryin' ta get sleeps 'round noon without hangin' upside-down from this here ceilin'."

"Ha! Ha ha!" Crinkles curled up around his eyes. "Oh, now I am laughing at that. Sure, and I suppose you wish to run round and round underneath it to generate 'just a pinch' of bad luck for no apparent reason? I will not be falling for that trick ever again." He stopped in front of the cell on her left. "Ooh, you look as though you are upset. And in pain! Don't tell me. Is Cosmo still having troubles with his fagiggly gland on the other side?"

Her Anti-Cosmo hissed. There was a _thud_ like he'd slammed his whole body to the glass wall. But, that's what Anti-Wanda would have done too. Heck- it's what a lot of Anti-Fairies would've gone and done.

"Okay. Here you are, Anti-Cosmo. I believe snakes are fond of eating mice. Isn't that how it goes?" There came another _poof_ of magic. Anti-Wanda could feel the dry heat of it even from where she stood, so different than the typical, comforting Anti-Fairy chill. Something - multiple somethings - squeaked and scuttled. Jorgen chuckled as he moved along to the other few thousand awaiting their last meal of the day. Even Anti-Wanda had noticed that he only bothered himself with the prisoners on ground level. Some other fairy-type folk would sweep through to take care of the rest, like maybe that elfy Binky person with the funny purple dress and belt that made it look like he hadn't changed or even taken baths since the In-Between Ages. _He_ still had wings.

"That was a good try with the ladder, dearest," Anti-Cosmo murmured once the big fairy had disappeared around the corner.

"I weren't really tryin' anythin'. I just wanna get a good night's sleep in this trappy place. I got achings 'tween my wings." Anti-Wanda took hold of the bars that sealed her in her cell. "Iss't true, Anti-Cossie? Is yer flagoozit gland goin' good?

He whinnied like a horse. A moment of quiet. She could read the 'yes' in that.

"Um. How's them mousies taste?"

"I wouldn't know. _Rrr_ ight now, I'm a streetlamp from the 1800s."

"You should try turnin' back to regular or somethin'. Lamps don't eat mice."

"Yes. I realize that."

Anti-Wanda frowned, thinking hard... _er_. "You need a' get a fancy-schmancy gland transyplant or somethin' to put things right again. Don't you got a big brother? Couldn't ya get one a' them trainplants from him?"

"That ol' goody-goody?" Anti-Cosmo snorted, either out of disdain or because he had accidentally morphed himself into a pig. "If I _rrr_ ecall correctly, he's so deep in the anti-pixie corner of Anti-Fairy World, always offering to clean up their messes and sort them back into their own homes when they stumble from their parties high off Skittles and lemon bars, that we may never be seeing him again."

"Y'oughta call him sometime," she persisted. "Don't ya got that shelly phone from the gray folk somewhere?"

"Yes, it was the last thing I stole from H.P. before we left that dinner party of his about seven years ago. Or… was that perhaps earlier this year? Hm… I don't quite remember. I suppose it was earlier this year. Yes, that must be it." One of the mice squeaked again. "But firstly I left it back at the castle, and secondly the pixies have a magic lock on all of them anyway. The thing is utterly useless until requests have been approved, and unless policies have changed in the last couple years, I believe he screens them all himself."

Now Anti-Wanda was thoroughly confused. "Then how're ya gonna get better again? Don't broke Anti-Fairy flaglilies settle in after a bit of a while and freeze ya inta somethin' sweet'n good? Forever? Ain't that where shiny mirrors and black kittens'n salt shakers come from?"

"I won't get better," he told her, sounding as satisfied as a fat cheetah after devouring a gazelle. "Not unless that dunce Cosmo shows up t _rrr_ ying to convince Jorgen to let me go free so we can have our fagiggly glands transplanted into each other. Fortunately, the chances of that happening grow less microscopic with every passing hour. Thus, dearest, I am not worried."

At first, Anti-Wanda didn't say anything. Then, haltingly, she asked, "But, don't ya think Cosmo's gonna be gettin' a transplant from his big brother too?"

"Oh, Fairy-Dr. Studwell will try, if he finds about big brother Schnozmo, regardless of whether Fairy-Schnozmo himself is even in need of a transplant and will come off the worse after such an ordeal." The word ended in a chicken cluck. "But my hope is that Fairy-Cosmo, boob that he is, is at least bright enough not to reveal his existence in front of a doctor seeking out a gland donor. Even the most _idiotic_ fairy in the universe ought to know better than that. Fairy-Wanda won't let him."

She liked hearing stories about her counterpart - it seemed, sometimes, that Anti-Cosmo knew almost more about her than she did - so Anti-Wanda pressed a little harder both at his question and at the stone wall standing between them. "What d'ya mean by that-a-bit, 'xactamundo?"

Her husband's laugh was drier than Jorgen's _poof_ had been. "My little teacup, no Fairy doctor would ever operate on an Anti-Fairy if he learned he didn't have to."

Of course not.

"Why's that 'xactly, pum'kin?" she asked as she scratched behind her ear with one foot.

"Because we're Anti-Fairies," Anti-Cosmo answered simply, his voice high like a bicycle bell. "They can't _rrr_ eally help themselves. It's biologically wired in those free-spirited fairies to avoid aiding us even in the smallest of ways. Even if the other option is hurting one of their own. As the Fairies always say, their instinct is to kill us on sight. The Finella reflex, they call it. _Reflex_ , as though it came naturally to them. It's why the Fairy Council created the Rule that automatically disables their wands whenever they attempt to interfere with us di _rrr_ ectly."

"Is it, though?"

He considered for a moment, then corrected himself. "Well. I suppose in theory, that instinct could be one of the traits dragged out of them and into their anti-self once he or she is born. But I would hope that to be an uncommon occurrence. It wouldn't do for an Anti-Fairy to be so vehemently bent on wiping their counterpart from existence. They would only kill themselves once the job was done. But, if Fairy-Cosmo has any love or respect at all for Fairy-Schnozmo, he won't let Dr. Studwell transplant his bad gland into his one and only brother."

This was all starting to make her brain swim with fishes. Anti-Wanda picked up her hotdog for the first time, but lowered it again without taking a bite. She replaced her foot on the floor. "But you think Fairy-Cosmo won't tell this doctor feller 'bout Sch… Sh… His brother?"

"I really don't think he will. But even if he does, I think Fairy-Wanda will quickly put a stop to that. She'll come up with something."

"Ya do? Really? Ya sure? What makes ya think she gonna do that? Don't she dislike this Fairy-Schnozits the way I kin't stand Anti-Schnozits?"

He smiled, and touched the wall that divided him from her. Though she couldn't see him do it, or even hear him with her sharp ears or her echolowhatsit when she bounced it off the opposite wall, Anti-Wanda could feel the action deep inside her throat as he said, "Why, I think she'll protect Fairy-Schnozmo because she's partly you, crumpet! In the same way you have always looked beyond boundaries and attempted to befriend her, I believe she will swallow her own instincts to hate we Anti-Fairies, her instinct to bring pain to we Anti-Fairies - to leave us _suffering_ \- and she'll coax the others to seek out me, who in a perfect world should be the obvious choice for a transplant as this would be an operation that benefits both of us, as opposed to Schnozmo who would end up stuck with a bad fagiggly inside him. _That_ is why I'm not worried over what might happen to me. Your soul is filled with love, and I've always thought that the two of you may not be quite so opposite after all, ahahaha!"

His voice turned into hissing smoke and the crackle of a campfire at the end. Anti-Wanda rested her forehead against her cell bars, arms dangling. It wouldn't be so bad if only she could see him. But hearing him grunt and whimper, not being able to mime holding his hand or even wave so he could see, that was the worst. Instead, she could only listen as he phased through shape after shape.

And that was hard, too. The way she'd been raised, Fairies were the ones who shifted shapes a hundred times a week. It was their culture. They turned themselves into noisy, flashing alarms to signal danger, or into crickets to signal. Why make animal noises with their own mouths when there was a shape that made it even easier?

It was against centuries upon centuries of Anti-Fairy tradition to lay claim to more than one animal form. Her family honored the scent hound, and Anti-Cosmo's honored the rat. Anti-Fairies valued such committed family ties. If Anti-Cosmo rejected their beloved culture, shifting through shapes as disloyally as a Fairy… even if it weren't his own fault… it was all too likely that their people might not even want him back. His days as a respected Anti-Fairy would draw to an end.

Were the people to shun their own High Count, what was she, the High Countess and his legal equal, left to do? Take up his reins of leadership and oversee those same folk who had spit upon her husband's head? Or hand power over to the camarilla court and end the Anti-Fairywinkle dynasty when it had hardly even begun?

Abandon her beloved, or up and walk away from the people who were her friends, from the culture that she adored, and follow him into exile for the rest of their days?

She didn't know.

And that actually really hurt, that she didn't know what she would do. Stay, or go?

Weary and cold, Anti-Wanda leaned there against the wall, reaching pointlessly into the quiet and the dark. If she only had the feel of his clawed hand in hers, that would take her fears away. She listened as he pretended not to weep. She listened as he smothered the grunts of his own pain. She listened until finally, he landed on something that could eat mice, and swallowed them. Though, being her husband, he shortly thereafter hacked them up like hairballs.

And then the door at the end of the chamber creaked open. Anti-Wanda pricked up her ears. Four shapes. One of them was Fairy-Jorgen. That much was obvious. The others were far smaller. One stood on the ground like a human, big head cocked. It was the two who floated like guardians on either side of him that made her brush off her tears and crack one of her wide smiles.

Fairy-Cosmo and Fairy-Wanda had come to save her husband after all.


	4. (89) Not

_Summary:_ Sanderson called in sick for work. Not entirely believing him, H.P. calls up Anti-Sanderson for confirmation, and learns more than he wanted to.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Sanderson, H.P.

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Rain Dance" / "?"

 _Prerequisites:_ None; the anti-pixies appeared in the FOP video game, "Clash With the Anti-World". The events of that game aren't considered canon, but I was fond of the wild green party animals, so I adopted them.

* * *

 **89\. Not** (Pre-series)

 _Year of Breath; Autumn of the Patient Dormouse_

* * *

The snapping, fizzy, bubbling, boiling noises did nothing for the screeching headache twiddling like three whirling birdies about his pointed ears, but then again, jumping on the bed for two hours and making grabs for the obnoxiously-high windowsill hadn't been doing anything for his headache, either. So, when the scrying bowl began to shoot up streams of water, Anti-Sanderson made his way hand-over-hand along the wall, taking more care than he otherwise might have not to step on any broken glass or stray soda cans pockmarked with heavy dents.

"And at this time a' day?" he seethed. Running claws through his tufted blond hair - Where had his hat flounced off to? - he found himself groaning in a very un-Anti-Sanderson-like manner. "It's gotta be two in the afte'noon. Maybe even 1:30- gotta be only 1:30 now. C'mon, how's an anti-pixie s'posed ta take a nap with all a' this racket going on? I'm _coming_ , yeesh! Cool ya jets, salt-paste!"

Upon reaching the desk, he stuck his finger in the wide black dish and carried it with him back to the crumpled bed. By the time he'd repositioned himself among the pillows, the reflection of his green fur and his new, cheerful smirk had melted into another face entirely. A somewhat older face lined with maybe a wrinkle here, maybe a faint dash of gray-white on top there. The thick black hair cowlicked twice in the front just like his own.

"H.P., bucko! My fav man! Stayin' chill, I hope?"

"Quite. Dude." The Head Pixie squinted down through the shimmering water on his end with eyes that told Anti-Sanderson like, half of everything ever. They trailed around what little of the pink room he could see from his position. Obviously, he was not impressed. Poor soggy sock probably would have preferred sterling gray, and fewer of the half-off coupons from restaurants and flyers for dances that had come and gone centuries ago that were tacked along the cracked and grubby walls. "My time is not a commodity I can afford to waste, so please be quick in answering. I wanted to know, are you feeling well?"

Anti-Sanderson pulled his lips back from his fangs in a grin. "I'm like mega hungover right now, brah. We broke out the non-diet soda and gummy bears last night and crashed hard. Not that partying i'n't what we do every night and not that we ain't used ta copin' with it. 'ey, if you see Anti-Cos, tell him he got the best big brother in the universe, 'kay peaches? Ol' Anti-Schnozie runs a tidy ship after we's all stumbled back ta bed."

The old fart snapped his fingers twice beside his ear. Beyond him, his office was three shades of purple and lined with old books on shelves that Anti-Sanderson guessed from the layers of dust were probably for show. Gotta look smart. He'd probably chosen that location to make his scrying bowl call on purpose. "Let me rephrase my question. Aside from the obvious, are you feeling well?"

"H-Pop, I never, never, neverland feel well. Eight times out a' thirteen, I wake up in the middle of the night to puke myself silly, and then I go looking for more junk food t' fill the void. Why?"

"Answer first and then I'll explain."

A secret? That prompted Anti-Sanderson to cock his head to the right. What was Sandy Prime getting up to over there on the other side of the Divide? Attempting to keep the curiosity out of his voice, but slipping enough in beneath the casual overtones, he said, "Aw, tell me why, cootchie-coo."

The Head Pixie's wings flickered up around his shoulders, but he forced them down again and set his jaw. All without looking up from whatever it was he was scribbling across various parchments, mind you. "I want your answer. Be grateful I'm allowing you to give it verbally rather than forcing you to file it in the proper format."

"I'm… I s'pose I'm not feelin' too great, nah. Not really at all. Not not not not not not… Why?"

"Hmm." He licked his finger and picked up another page. He picked it up- didn't even turn it, and still licked his finger. That fact might have slipped past a lot of anti-pixies, but not Anti-Sanderson. He noticed, and it made him bring his sunglasses down from his electric yellow hair so he could narrow his eyes without being obvious about it. Was the Head Pixie even working on anything at all, or was he just trying to put on the act of looking busy to put Anti-Sanderson on the defensive?

H.P. said, "Sanderson sent a message that he's too sick to come into work today. It's not like him to lie, but I wanted to know if that was true before I hunted him down and risked exposing myself to unnecessary germs. Being his anti-self you're synced up to him, so I thought I might ask. I'm now realizing my mistake."

"Not a prob, not a prob, not a probo _lita_." He licked his lips, then tapped a long nail against the side of the black stone bowl. "'ey. 'ey, I know what'd make him feel bette'. You should ask me what I'd do, potato chip."

A grimace. A brief glance up, then down. More rustling paper. "Should I? I think I would rather not."

"Go on. Ask!"

"Very well. What do you think would make Sanderson feel better, Anti-Sanderson?"

"You should get him a drink of water, then bring him a hot cloth for his face and rub it for about two minutes. Leave it there while you… what was… Oh, yeah." He clapped his green hands twice. "Get a tub of ice cream ready for him. Cream soda is the best. And no stuffy blankets on the bed. That's what Anti-Schnozmo does. And he brings me orange juice."

"I'm not going to fawn over him. I have neither the time nor desire to do that, and I don't want him to start playing sick for attention."

Anti-Sanderson shrugged. "You asked, H. Give 'im some sugar for me. I've been passin' lonely nights since you told him not ta stray over here, and especially past his curfew."

Now the Head Pixie really did look up and hold his stare. Lavender eyes to lavender eyes, separated by a shimmering sheet of water. "You ran him ragged for three weeks straight forcing him to play disc jockey without hardly a break. He was pushing himself to make it through every day of work. As long as he was meeting his deadlines, I allowed it. Until I realized he was running purely on coffee fumes. He passed out in the middle of a presentation, bubbling at the mouth, and didn't wake for an entire weekend. Someone had to draw the line."

"Aw, well, you know me. Can't tell a C-flat from a J-sharp. But I did let 'im away from spinning those big black discs a few times here and there. He's not the worst dance partner I've eve' twirled around by the fingertips, and his clumsy inexperience blends in just fine 'longside our own unsteadiness. And I made 'im _happy_ , didn't I?"

Anti-Sanderson thought he picked up the slightest ounce of hesitation before the Head Pixie said, "He appeared to be."

"He's a sweet chip. Gives me smiles when I'm close enough I could ruffle his hair, which sometimes I do. It's disgusting that you try to suppress that cheerful side of him with a palm a' saliva and a disapproving eye. It's not an adolescent phase. I'm tellin' ya, H- if you'd just show the duckie a little love every once in awhile, maybe he wouldn't be so desperate for _my_ approval. You either gotta treat 'im right, or let me sub in like a regula'."

Apparently, for a brief moment the Head Pixie stopped addressing the anti-pixie to snap that Sterling needed to find something more productive to do than folding paper boats out of old contracts. Then he returned and adjusted his glasses. "Sanderson knows what I expect of him. If he fails to meet my expectations, he'll lose his privileges. It's as simple as that. Your self-destructive influence is what cost him the final shreds of a chance he had at vice president position, in case you were wondering. He'll be finding out about that at the ceremony tomorrow night. We'll see how much he wants your 'love' then."

"That cuts, pal." Anti-Sanderson flicked a fluff of white from his foot and swapped the scrying bowl to his other knee. "Listen. Can we get a li'l less a' the guilt trip next time, sugar packet? You're just gonna make me feel sicker'n I already am."

"I'll let you schedule another appointment of praying to your porcelain god, then. Though I rather suspect that persuading Sanderson to believe I was his villain and you were his hero so he might lose everything he's always believed he wanted was your plan all along. You're his anti-pixie, after all, and you feed off his misery."

"Do mine pointy ears deceive me? You claim you knew it was my plan, and yet'cha never tried stoppin' him? Not true, not true. I think someone's lying ta me. Ohoh, yes I do. I don't much like lying. You're not quite the type ta letcha children make their own mistakes! You know what I think, gum wrapper?" He sat forward on his bed, smiling at his reflection in the black surface of the bowl itself- his face and jacket with all their clashing colors. "I think my Sandy-boy pulled a fast one ove' Big Daddy's big forehead, and you di'n't catch him 'til he got sloppy."

H.P. wrinkled his nose. "Think what you care to. I'm certainly not interested in being manipulated today and your words hold no power over me. All right. Before I hang up, I have one request to make: Will you connect me through to the Head Anti-Pixie?"

"Speaking."

After a moment of hesitation, the Head Pixie took off his glasses and blinked. "I'm sorry. I think you must be breaking up. Where did you say your father was?"

"Well, like, so do you wanna talk to my old man, or to the Head Anti-Pixie? Because one of 'em is down to half his marbles and the other is my pop. He ain't here. Can I fly a message?"

There were quick fingersnaps from the other side. "My time and patience are running to the ends of their cords. Please, if you would, grant me the chance to speak to the Head Anti-Pixie. I will not ask again."

"H-Pix, my friend, you've got him on the line like a flopping fish, right here and now." Anti-Sanderson looked about for his floppy navy blue hat flecked with yellow stars, and grabbed it from the floor between the bed and his overturned desk. Swinging it over his golden hair, he sat up again. The star on the tip twinkled noisily like in the song. "I ove'threw the ol' wingbag a solid fifteen years ago. His cap and title rest on my head these days. So if you're wantin' a' hook up a mix-and-mingle with my folk, lay it on me. We cate'."

At first, the Head Pixie seemed too lost to respond. Anti-Sanderson plopped back in his pillows and amused himself by running his socked feet up and down the wall.

"… You overthrew the old Head Anti-Pixie?"

"'Old' was right. Not that it was hard- Actually, it was easier'n it sounds, taffy tart. A couple of us were livin' it up on one of the higher roofs and he, well, he had an accident. If you remember, you tried ta place an embargo and a recall on our starpieces centuries ago. And, like anyone, we don't fly so well when there ain't much around ta 'ttract the magic field and it starts dryin' up. Broke a couple a' his bones in the fall (thought he mighta paralyzed hisself for awhile there, but he walked it off) and crawled away somewhere ta nurse hisself back to health. Again, all without magic, so I'd give him a whoop whoop if I were you and thank the Molpa-Pel that th'injury and sickness sync only works in one direction. Now, if you'da thought ta use a healing spell on you'self for no particula' reason, he might've been up and full of drunken rage within a day or two. I may not be where I am t'day."

" _Why_?"

He rolled over and pulled the bowl closer to him with both hands. Elbows on his messy covers (or what was left of them- streamers, really). Fists on his cheeks. "Why do I do anythin'? I was bored. That's really all there is to it. Your friends the Anti-Fairies are creatures of bad luck, and we getta be the creatures a' bad habits. 'ey, don't get so steamed; the kook's all apples and oranges now and cheery as a sandpiper. He doesn't really mind that I've got his cap, so I just neve' gave it back. You know ol' Pops."

The Head Pixie appeared to be grinding his teeth against each other. He was no longer sitting in his chair, but standing above his scrying bowl with arms braced to either side. "Do your brothers support you in this?"

"I dunno. I haven't had a sobe' conversation with 'em for awhile."

"I see. Thank you for informing me of this… development. Although I wish you would have brought it to my attention as it happened. I like to document these things."

Anti-Sanderson stretched out and grabbed a can of cherry soda. He popped the lid with one claw as he usually did, and a fluffy pink stream swelled up in his furry face. "'ey, and don't start shootin' my Sandypop any expectant looks 'cuz a' this. I don't think he's worked out any plans ta overthrow you yet. He's a simpleton'n a cowa'd, and he could never bring hisself to do it. It's not in his goopy li'l heart. Not, not, not, nope. I like him. He's cute."

"Your input has been taken into consideration. I thank you for your time." He hung up with a snort.


	5. (75) End of the World

_Summary:_ Juandissimo's got the fairy flu. Not knowing who else to turn to, Remy swallows his pride and seeks help from Timmy Turner.

 _Characters:_ Remy, Timmy, Timmy's Dad, Hadley (Mentioned)

 _Rating:_ K

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Open Your Eyes" / "Make You Proud"

 _Prerequisites:_ None; see also, Season 0 Episode 5, "The Fairy Flu")

* * *

 **75\. End of the World** (Shortly after "Fairly Odd Baby")

 _Year of Breath; Spring of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

Remy's left side went stiff, abandoning his right hand to grope stupidly towards the door in the dark. The door that had just swung open. The door that was now blocked by a rather groggy-looking, drooling man whom in the daylight he would never be caught associating with, even if one of them were a corpse and the other the only undertaker in all of town.

 _¡Dios mío dios mío dios mío dios-!_

"Um." The boy reached into the inside pocket of his pristine white blazer and pulled out a wad of green bills. "Pardon me dearly, Mr. Turner, but I just came to return this- I believe all of it is yours."

The drooling picked up a little more, the spine snapped to attention, the mouth formed a few unintelligible phrases, and the dark teal eyes gleamed. It was a tried-and-true trick. Remy tossed the cash over his shoulder, and Mr. Turner chased the scattered bills through the yard. Could someone who was clearly as bright as Turner really have a father so… dim?

It would at least buy him some time. And locking the door behind him before shoving a chair beneath the knob would buy him even more time. With that taken care of, Remy raced up the pitifully small amount of stairs. An upstairs seemed like a good place to shove a bedroom, even for a house as cramped as this one.

The hall split in two directions. Far to his right, a door had been left partly open. Remy rested his hand on the banister and leaned a little towards it. Just enough to catch a glimpse of a woman sprawled out in a large bed, sawing logs.

He took the left side of the hall, passing a bathroom and a portrait of an older couple that the boy didn't take any interest in. Correct choice- the door on this end had a small sign above the handle that read, _Timmy's Room: PLEASE, PLEASE Knock_.

Remy entered without knocking and switched on the lights. He was glad he had; the floor was strewn with toys, several of which had been pierced by what appeared to be teeth much too small to be Turner's. The blue-sheeted bed stood across from the door. On a sidetable just beside his pillow, a goldfish bowl rested like a crown jewel between a notebook and wire cup of pens. Nothing flashy, and easy to disguise. Now that was clever, although Remy couldn't help but wonder if anyone ever had or ever would question the lifespan of those two little fish.

After hopscotching his way between scattered Crimson Chin comic books and video game controllers, he grabbed hold of Turner's arm and gave it a shake. "Turner, wake up!"

Turner jolted beneath his hand. In a quarter of a second he was on his knees, blinking and fumbling and gasping words that were probably wishes for Remy's head on a silver platter. That was something Remy really didn't feel like dealing with right now.

"Snap out of it, Turner." He slapped the other boy across the cheek with the back of his hand. Not hard, mind you - he wasn't any kind of savage, and especially not after that mistaken island misadventure - but enough to bring Turner's focus back to reality. Still panting slightly, Turner lived up his last name and turned his head in Remy's direction. He flapped out the collar of his pink pajamas and blinked before he squinted.

"What- Remy Buxaplenty?"

"Juandissimo is sick." Remy took a creased paper out of his pocket and shoved it into Turner's lap. "That's a list of his symptoms right now. Do you recognize it?"

"What… Why are you asking _me_?"

"Who else am I supposed to ask? You're the only other kid in Dimmsdale with fairies."

"Right. Of course you'd think that. You don't associate much with us down in here in the middle-class. Geez, is it really morning already? It was midnight like two seconds ago." Turner massaged his eyes with a thumb and one forefinger. "There isn't anyone else in here I need to be aware of before I start talking, is there? Never mind- you'd lose Juandissimo for deliberately outing me if there were. Why didn't you _poof_ up to Fairy World and ask somebody there?"

"Excuse me. Have you thought this through in any way? Unlike you, I have only _on_ e fairy godparent, Turner, and he is currently out of commission."

Through a yawn, "Why didn't you take the long way?"

"How? Are you perhaps talking about the Rainbow Bridge? That stupid trail is three miles' walk uphill."

"Yes, but you get to be on a _rainbow_."

Remy made an up and down motion to indicate what all he was wearing beneath his usual daily blazer. "In case you couldn't tell from my wrinkled pajamas and dripping sweat, I'm sort of on a time crunch here."

Turner ruffled his messy brown hair with both hands, messing the mess up messily. "Why? You know fairies are immortal, right? It's not the end of the world."

The richer boy positioned his hands on his hips. "And _you_ know immortality only extends to breathing, surviving magical attacks, and having a temporary extended lifespan, right? They can heal quickly, it's true, but if the damage is severe enough, like a skull bashed into their brain or a cut throat that's kept with constant pressure on it-"

" _Buh buh buh buh buh_. This all sounds like really interesting information that I don't want to hear about this early in the morning. Okay. Constant sneezing. Pale, swollen lips. Purplish nose. Losing control of magic."

"Along with hands and feet that won't stop twitching at the wrists and ankles, no matter what form he takes on. I've certainly never seen it before. Do you recognize it?"

Turner tapped a finger to his chin. His mouth twitched slightly downward, then slightly upward. "By any chance, did you lose all your hair _after_ he sneezed around you?"

"My-" Remy grabbed his hair. His fingers touched smooth, dry skin. One of Juandissimo's favorite angry phrases slipped past his lips.

"Case closed, then. That sounds like he's probably come down with the fairy flu. Cosmo got it once when I was nine. It's super contagious, but only magical beings can catch it, so yep, we're totally immune. I guess we're lucky it isn't chicken poofs." Turner arched his back like a menagerie lion and hopped out of bed. "Okey-doke. Give me just a second to grab my hat and jacket. There's no snow out there, is there? Poof's been playing and I don't know where he took my boots."

"¡ _Andando_! We don't have time for this! Get your godparents to _poof_ us back to my place this instant!"

"Hey." Turner put up his hand. "Cosmo and Wanda just spent three hours trying to force their baby to bed. We made a deal that I wouldn't make any wishes until noon tomorrow so they can get some shut-eye."

Remy set his teeth. "How much are you asking? I'll pay it. Right here, no questions asked."

"We made a _deal_ ," he said from the closet.

Each word punched the Buxaplenty boy like a smack below the jaw. But, he realized then, recalculating quickly and reluctantly, Turner probably didn't see as much value in cash as a normal person would when his fairies could whip him up anything he wanted to purchase at simply a word. Grumbling, he stuffed his hands beneath his armpits. "I suppose you know a cure, then?"

"Sure, it's just sauerkraut."

One arched eyebrow later, he repeated, "It's sauerkraut. As in, shredded fermented cabbage."

"Tons of it." Turner came back out of the closet, pushing the buttons through the wrong holes of his plush pink coat. That irritated Remy, but he kept his mouth shut on the matter. "It's not always surefire, but hey- I'm just repeating what I remember. And if the flu's really gotten to him bad, you'll probably need to force-feed it."

Remy followed him to the door. "Could you at least ask your godparents to _poof_ a jar or two of that stuff up so I might get back to Juandissimo with it as soon as possible?"

Of course, he realized the mistake the instant he said it. Magic couldn't affect magical objects, and one could have turned that sentence around and said that magical food and any healing qualities associated with it had no effect on magical beings either. It may look delicious, and magical food tasted perfectly fine to Remy, but though he might not gain calories from a wished-up plate of tacos, Juandissimo always insisted that the watered-down taste made it not even worth the effort. Wet paper topped with spice and cheese.

"Hey, you're the rich dude. Don't you have cash on hand, like, twenty hours a day?"

"Twenty-four, but at this time of night?" How exactly did Turner think the world worked? "Bribing a store owner to open before usual hours isn't a difficult thing, unless he's back home asleep. I've barged into enough houses for one evening. There's no time to guess and check."

Turner shrugged only one shoulder and headed out through his bedroom door without holding it open. Apparently, he simply expected Remy to follow him like a pest rather than a guest. "I thought you might say something like that, so that's why we're going to Hadley's."

"Who is…" Remy snapped his fingers only an instant after he trailed off. "The girl with the obnoxiously large white bowtie around her neck. From Cupid's godparty! Of course!"

"That's right. She's got an insomniac fairy or something-"

"-the skittish one with the powdery blue hair-"

"-who spilled all the salt-"

Remy was even smiling pathetically at the sorry memory now as Timmy studied the chair wedged beneath the front doorknob, bewildered. "And summoned that anti-fairy out the window-"

"-and he jerked back so fast that he splashed coffee all over Cupid's loveseat-"

"-so she excused herself early-"

"-and she's only about seven minutes' run from here," Turner finished. He disguised another yawn in the crook of his arm, and both boys temporarily fell silent when his father came bursting back inside with an armful of cash, grass, leaves, and various other green items he was bellowing he'd found in the yard of the neighboring Dinklebergs. Them, Remy knew. Continuing his story after they'd stepped outside, Turner said, "I found that out when Eryx - his name is Eryx - started bothering Wanda for her sister's autograph and we decided to skedaddle. Hadley can be a bit… touchy? She gets offended easily, she doesn't like new faces, and she definitely won't take being bossed around, but if you work it just right then you can get her to help you. But only if you can afford it, so I try to avoid her when I can. And I have fairies of my own, so that's almost always."

"… You've had encounters before, I see."

He thought about that for a moment, scratching his chin. "You could say she runs a kind of black market in the neighborhood. The kids bring her money, she gets them whatever they wish for by the afternoon. It's not against Da Rules to do that. But she thinks it's not a problem once it leaves her hands, and never unwishes _anything_. I'm not allowed to interfere with her wishes directly, so I can't undo them and sometimes I have to come up with ways to trap laser-shooting toy robots and poisonous snakes. She's just lucky she goes to middle school like way across town, or Crocker would have tracked her down by now for sure."

Remy tilted his head, then righted it again. "Do you know a lot of other godkids?"

"A couple. We're the only three in Dimmsdale that I've actually met, but I know there are _at least_ four others around here. But fairies aren't allowed to tell and we have to figure it out for ourselves. I saw a yellow cat once. Not like ginger, but bright yellow. I've seen it running around as a rat too. Once I spotted an orange skunk hanging around the bus stop."

"And I've caught sight of a purple hummingbird once, but I passed it off as Juandissimo. Until I found him in rabbit form down the block, babysitting some random bunny he'd rescued from a drain and arguing with a pixie- Do you know pixies? They're easy people to strike up honest deals with. The Head Pixie is quite fond of the golf course behind the Fancy-Shmancy Country Club partially funded and maintained by _my_ family, and he plays me sometimes when I've sent my three more-observant butlers off on errands or to attend school for me. I'd forgotten about that encounter entirely until you just said something."

"Mmph. Well, I hope Hadley can help you. If she doesn't, you can always come back and find me, and I really will wake up my godparents. The fairy flu's not really something you want to have around for long."

Remy very nearly stopped walking. He sort of stumbled a step from the concrete sidewalk to the black road, but in the dark, Turner probably didn't notice. "Find you? What, does that mean you don't plan to come back to my house? Even when I've invited you to walk inside?"

Timmy shook his head. "I found out last time around that I'm allergic to sauerkraut. So's my dad."

"But you… you got all ready, with your coat and your shoes. Why get out of bed, then? Why walk with me? I hope you realize that I'm not intending to pay you any sort of bonus for it, if you just turn around and go back."

"I figured that you wouldn't know where Hadley lives, and I don't know her address- only the way to walk there by muscle memory." Timmy cocked an eyebrow. "If you're on a desperate time crunch, shouldn't we be running?"

"Oh. Oh- oh, right. I suppose we should."


	6. (9) Make You Proud

_Summary:_ Anti-Wanda is excited to have won a gold medal at the Fairy Games and wants approval; Anti-Cosmo isn't one to rest on laurels.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Wanda, H.P., assorted anti-fairies, assorted pixies, Timmy, Wanda, Poof, Scott Hamilton

 _Rating:_ K

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "End of the World" / "?"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **9\. Make You Proud** ("The Fairly Oddlympics")

 _Year of Breath; Spring of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

It was no shocker when Anti-Wanda crossed the finish line first. Anti-Cosmo had made sure of it, and it wasn't hard. Sure, some ninny off the street might shake out his wings importantly and chirp that he, like any other being capable of channeling starpiece magic, was unfortunately incapable of using aforementioned magic to cheat at any form of sport or contest (at least, without an approved Immunity Badge and _those_ things were tough to come by even for the von Strangles). And, sure. On paper, that was entirely true.

But not a word in Da Rules prevented him from tweaking the track and field course from his perch in the stands. Hey, this was a _magical_ Olympics in a _magical_ world, with hurdles one might assume were formed from the wood of _magical_ trees. Sometimes, accidents happened. Including accidents that might lead to a scrawny fairy-elf crossbreed misjudging his jump and winning himself a complimentary trip backwards into the sky.

After she'd snapped the pale ribbon at the end of the track (fortunately with her torso and not her teeth this time), Anti-Wanda spun in a circle, arms raised. Anti-Cosmo stuck two fingers among his fangs and serenaded her with one of his better whistles. Of course she'd won. He'd sealed the deal by shaking Binky. The small pixie who'd been inches behind her maintained his even composure for a brave several seconds, and then flopped onto his side. The Head Pixie was already drifting over with a water bottle and a disappointed look. Running was, evidently, not among their few strengths. "Aw, y'did real good, little sport," Anti-Cosmo heard his wife call to him, and she received a grunt in response.

The self-proclaimed MC and supposedly impartial host of the Games (not to mention Fairy-Cosmo's human godchild) Timothy Turner used his microphone to summon the three racers to the podium. Anti-Wanda, apparently forgetting the use of her leathery wings in her excitement, scrambled past a sore and singed Binky and climbed up to the top. An official of sorts (Was that Fairy-Harold Honeyweaver?) _poof_ ed a golden medal on a blue ribbon around her neck. The weight knocked her half off balance. But she straightened, arms up, for the universe to see.

"I'd like ta thank my high classmaties a' Carl Pookypanties Low School fer teachin' me how t'always run."

Anti-Cosmo _foop_ ed away the black flag he'd been waving and made his leaping, flapping zig-zag from his seat down to the guard rail, and from there to the ground. He found Anti-Wanda still sitting in her place when he arrived. She beamed and kicked her feet.

"Didja see me beat 'em, Anti-Cossie? I beat 'em fastest. I e'en beat the elfy fairy."

"Yes, I was the one who took care of him. My doing." Flitting up beside his wife while the crowd milled away for ten-minute preparation break, he took hold of her medal and lifted it near his face. After a moment spent groping for his monocle, he adjusted it and inspected its every surface. He nibbled on the edge.

"No," he said quickly when Anti-Wanda made as if to follow his example from the other side. "I won't have you eating this, you chow-brained cow."

"But I just wanted a' know what it tasted like."

"Of course. Though I don't know how you have any surviving tastebuds in your mouth at all, given what all you eat. I was simply t _rrr_ ying to determine whether or not this was crafted with real gold."

"Y'can tell that from the taste a' it?" she asked in her usual slow surprise. "Ah thought I was th'only one who could do that."

Anti-Cosmo shook his head and lifted the blue ribbon from her neck. Knowing his wife as he did, this was something better suited to a life in his pockets. "You can tell because it's soft, dear. Now, honestly, what are you holding your upturned hand out for?"

"Uh. I dunno. But…" Anti-Wanda strained her neck as she took it back. "Ah won."

"Yes, your victory was assured. Well, come along, Clarice. Come down from there. We must be moving on to our next event. An American dueling sport called boxing, if I'm not mistaken, though I do so ever loathe the ve _rrr_ y idea of physical combat." He turned, cocking his head when he glanced left and right and took in all the approaching Anti-Fairies. "And what are you lot all standing around this end of the stadium for for?"

"Uh…" Anti-Poof Anti-Everwish flicked his gaze over Anti-Cosmo's shoulder. With a second, sharper shake of his head, the High Count made shooing motions in their general direction.

"Get on with you. Tally-ho. We've got a boxing ring to be t _rrr_ acking down. Get on, get on. Let us show those ruffians precisely why Anti-Fairies aren't the type to ever be messed with. Anti-Binky, you'll be _rrr_ epresenting us for it. There are three rounds, and we don't play until the second. I trust you can hold against whichever idiot pixie gets thrown against you. Anti-Wanda?"

Anti-Wanda was off the podium, though she wasn't even floating. She stood there, staring at her feet. One hand pressed against her flat stomach. Anti-Cosmo couldn't imagine what thought had wriggled into her brain - or had even managed to find her brain - and really didn't have the time to investigate. He called her name again and offered his elbow for her to take. She did.

The domed, white building that housed the indoor ring was situated above the westward end of the stadium on a glittery pink cloud of its own. Two blue doors _whoosh_ ed open upon their arrival, startling both anti-fairies. They exchanged uncomfortable glasses as they realized they'd just been about to fly face-first into glass. It seemed as though it might be time to whip the echolocation out again.

Deliciously cold air washed over them upon their sweeping inside. Near the north corner of the ring, Anti-Cosmo spotted the Head Pixie apparently settling a spat between two of his larger pixies, one of his hands to a shoulder of each. A tiny pixie clung to the back of his leg.

"There is no soccer competition here, Mr. Snow," he said, looking down at it. "You will be acting on our behalf when it comes to gymnastics."

"With all due respect, sir, I think I would be more useful performing karate."

"You don't know the first thing about karate. Gymnastics it is."

"Here's an Anti-Fairy actually wishing good luck in that event, old chap," Anti-Cosmo called to him, and flashed the golden medal from the pocket of his jacket. The implication of his words earned him a fine array of frustrated sunglassed stares, and he chuckled about it the whole skim upward toward the reserved seating intended for High Count and Countess, far above the simpler and common folk.

"Well?" Anti-Cosmo dusted off Anti-Wanda's seat with his hand before offering it to her. "I think we should have a clear enough view of any underhanded foul-play that might occur down there in the ring, what?"

She rubbed her neck. "Mmhm. Anti-Cosmo, kin Ah see my medal again?"

"Of course. Here it is… Isn't it lovely?" he asked when she'd been staring at its shiny surface for quite some time. He kept one hand on the ribbon, ready to yank it away at her slightest attempt to devour it.

Anti-Wanda rubbed a circle on it with her fist. "D'you think I would a' still won if ya hadn't stopped the elf?"

"Really, that depends on a great deal of things. That Binky chap down there is obviously a crossbreed. You, however, are a full-blooded anti-fairy who has the honor of bearing the wings of a free-tailed bat."

"The fastest kind a' bat."

"It is indeed. Of course, the wind was against you, and you are not exactly the most balanced upon your feet. So, perhaps, but then again, perhaps not."

She touched his right wing with the tip of hers and cracked a buck-toothed smile. "But Ah don't almost fly sideways weird sometimes like you do."

Just as he went to brush her off, there was a genie-like _Gong!_ as a boxing glove slammed into something that definitely should not have made a gonging noise. Anti-Cosmo whipped around half an instant before one of the unlucky boxers plowed through the ceiling. Plaster and bits of wood rained down with sheets of dust, for a moment obscuring the center of the ring. If he squinted, he could piece together the vague outlines of the Head Pixie, Timothy, and Fairy-Wanda near the corners.

"That poor pixie," Anti-Cosmo murmured. He'd lost his monocle when he spun around, but Anti-Wanda was quick to hand it to him.

"Aw, shoot. This next challenge's lookin' a mite tougher'n that race I won was."

"Yes, yes, but I don't doubt that we'll pull through in the end. We are Anti-Fairies, after all, and the April Fool may be large in stature, but Anti-Binky really ought to be able to… Wait a moment. That isn't…?"

His wings dropped like barbells.

The pixie was the one still standing when the plaster dust cleared. The _pixie_! Fairies shuffled about in mild chaos among the stands. Wings buzzed. Wands gleamed. The faintest smile had pressed itself across the Head Pixie's lips. He may as well have been setting off fireworks, hanging up a rainbow disco ball, and throwing a rave capable of turning even the huldufólk green as anti-pixies with envy (or sickness). Anti-Cosmo didn't doubt that, cozy reserved seating or not, there was some foul play going on that he himself had failed to catch. H.P. was simply too confident for there not to be.

Now Anti-Cosmo found himself pinned with a difficult choice to make. He couldn't afford to lose Anti-Binky. Not with another two dozen events left to go.

Timothy took up his microphone. "And to Round 2-"

"The Anti-Fairies forfeit the match!"

Silence, dry and dead. Then voices began popping up around the stadium. Heads turned, all of them focusing on the dark, well-dressed blot in the top of the stands in his box of honor. Anti-Cosmo ground his fangs.

"We forfeit the match," he said again, leaning against the rail. "Bravo to the pixies, I say. Pip pip, or something to that effect."

Monotone chicken clucking echoed among the pavilion, starting with the cocky Head Pixie himself and spreading with the fury of starving tigers. Even a few of the goodly fairies joined in, and Anti-Cosmo stewed in it. Plucking off his monocle, he rubbed it fiercely against his cravat. He was not so foolish that he knew not when to swallow his pride. Oh, let the little pixies have their win. The orderly twits had a ratio of only one fleck of brawn to every pound of brain, and smarts certainly wouldn't be helping them out here. Out on the agility course, the Anti-Fairies would annihilate them.

Back above the stadium grass, beating his own free-tailed bat wings, Anti-Cosmo paced in the air and stewed over his ragged bottom lip. Something was afoot. Dirty, two-bit cheating. Although impressive, the fact that the _Pixies_ were stooping to it was not welcome news in the least. He'd thought that mostly, they considered themselves too good for it. There was an imaginary scale in the universe. The Fairies balanced on one plate. His people on the opposite. The Pixies functioned as the branching handle between.

If a Fairy baby was wise or strong, its counterpart was, well, not. You didn't get either Fairies or Anti-Fairies of merely average intelligence. Only polar ends, highs or lows. Averages were for Pixies. There were heralds of good luck who played war with harbingers of bad luck, and they were calmly watched over by creatures of plain and simple logic. The impartial vote. And always the impartial vote.

No, no. This couldn't be happening. It was the duty of the few Pixies there were in existence to oversee market exchanges, shipments, and business deals so that two far more populated species biologically wired to avoid or mock or injure or bring misery to or even outright attempt to destroy the other on sight (so forget sitting down in a civil meeting with one another) didn't have to. Pixies were supposed to pretend they would cast the deciding stone- not actually go and do it! They were beings of order, and arguably the other two classes were both chaos over there on the ends.

There was a program. It wasn't to be messed with. If a Fairy held 7/10 of the magic between a cross-Court pair, then the Anti-Fairy could only ever channel the remaining 3/10 of it. They matched. They fit like puzzle pieces. It wasn't right to change the familiar pattern, to alter the flow of things. With Pixies elbowing their way across the Anti-Fairy playground, karma would be boiling just on the horizon; if fortune was shifting in favor of the overarching level of "badness" in the universe, then that would only be "bad" news for said "beings of badness" in a short amount of time.

These underhanded, cheating things had to be done with deliberate care. Inch by inch to allow the world to readjust and then avoid the stinging rebound. Here his people were, surrounded by oblivious Pixies just playing with toys that didn't belong to them.

What they didn't realize was that when it came to tipping the scales of Luck to the left of the homeostasis point, there had to be deliberate calculations involved. Because if such blatant cheating continued to go on, touching the lives of more and more people, there would be a price to pay for it. A price steadily growing steeper and steeper like some sort of avalanche in reverse now that the stupid pixies were stupidly interfering with stupid universal rules and conditions that their species had always supposedly been immune to and therefore they could never understand.

And who was going to end up suffering the backlash? The Anti-Fairies. Always the Anti-Fairies. Because Pixies were inherently balanced. The universe let them walk either in the sunny summer mountains or the deep murky trenches and paid them little mind. He hated them. In a neutral sort of way.

But there had to be justice. There had to be balance. That was _how it was meant to be_.

"Anti-Cossie?"

He swiped his wings down in a rough snap as he spun to face her. " _Yes_ , Anti-Wanda?"

His wife rubbed her shoulder. "Aw, it's just, I was wonderin' if…if'n… About racin'…"

She either chose not to finish organizing her thoughts, or actually hadn't. Before Anti-Cosmo could prompt her to go on, the Head Pixie himself drifted over with three of his underlings trailing after him. For the two whose hair didn't flip up in a double cowlick at the front, their typical emotionless facade had begun to slip. At the moment, the pixie who must have knocked the April Fool clear out of the ring was flaunting his golden medal on its blue ribbon. The other, with a faint bruise above his eye in about the same place where the track and field runner had slammed his head into the ground, was steaming horribly, wings ablur. He had one hand inside his jacket and seemed to be just waiting for the prime moment to whip out his cell phone and _ping_ salt all over his own coworker's head right in front of the two anti-fairies. Ooh, now that would be fun.

"Well, A.C.," H.P. said, "at the rate you're plodding along at, it won't be long before you can kiss Turner's shortless behind good-bye forever."

Anti-Cosmo bristled. "You have _one_ medal, old chap. That would make your people and mine even. So I wouldn't get too big for my size extra-extra-large b _rrr_ itches in your position. After all, it was we Anti-Fairies who snatched first place in the races."

The pixie with the ribbon stuck his tongue out at his companion. That was the breaking point. The second lunged for the first, and in an instant the two were squabbling together in the grass. H.P. shut his eyes and held them that way, even when they tumbled beneath his feet and between him and the anti-fairies. A dark vein appeared across his forehead. The cowlicked pixie, Sanderson, tightened his fingers into his folded arms.

"Ya betcha silly square wings we won!" Anti-Wanda said, suddenly brightening. "Anti-Cossie, were ya watchin' when Ah went and took first place back there?"

He ignored her. Flustered pixies were a rare catch, and H.P. was clearly pretending that if he couldn't see them, then no one else could either. Anti-Cosmo wasn't about to let the opportunity slip through his fingers, and especially if they _were_ doubling the amount of cheating going on in this corner of the cloudlands. He leaned back in the air, arms folded behind his head and the left leg crossed over the right. "Oh, dearie me. Looks like _some_ body's pride took a nasty spill on the track. They're not used to one of them getting something the others don't, hm? Better prepare yourself for dealing with the little _rrr_ ascals when they work themselves up to this state, H.P., because you'll have at least thirty more of them acting this way by noon."

H.P.'s gray cell phone was out and unflipped in under a second. Before Anti-Cosmo had the chance to react, a butterfly net had _ping_ ed into his hands (Wasn't that against competition rules?) He drew it behind his shoulder like a golf club and swung. Anti-Cosmo yelped and threw out one hand, but Anti-Wanda grabbed his arm and yanked him away. The net enveloped the two fighting pixies. They broke apart and flopped on their stomachs, limp and silent. Anti-Cosmo shared a wicked glance with his wife, and they both floated down to plant their feet on top of them. H.P. let the handle of the net drop to the ground.

"That would be because you have a desk job, Cinna. A sharkvark could pursue you through Cherish Jungle and you'd still find a way to avoid exercise."

"I have a desk job? I have a desk job? Kaufman, you lie on your back on the mail room table tapping at your starpiece but otherwise not moving for hours on end."

"Sometimes I carry packages by hand, and that's why I have such strong hands for boxing with. I run messages. I walk where I need to get. You _ping_ down the hallway to the restroom."

H.P. kicked the wooden rim of the net's head. "So help me, I will dock both your paychecks. This is not an argument worth having."

"Someone who uses magic to move everywhere may not have been the smartest choice for a track and field course," Anti-Cosmo pointed out. He'd never witnessed an argument in utter monotone before, and he had to admit that despite his irritation with whatever it was the Pixies were up to, he found it amusing.

"I eat well every day, meat and vegetables and all, while you sit beside me and gorge yourself on pizza and hamburgers during lunch break."

"It doesn't count as unhealthy if it's vegetarian pizza."

"You drink soda."

"You drink soda?" the Head Pixie repeated. "During work hours?"

"I drink carbonated water, sir."

The pixie called Cinna drew in a breath of air he didn't actually need before delivering his final smashing blow. "Well, you don't even like paperwork."

"Who likes paperworks?" wondered Anti-Wanda aloud.

H.P. gathered what little hair he had into two fistfuls of white. "You are genetically identical. The results would have come out the same way had your positions been reversed. The only way one could possibly have an advantage over the other is if one of you actually did exercise on a reasonable basis like Hamilton, Newman, and Faust. I am regretting telling those three to save their strength for swimming and the mountain scaling."

"Bitter shame what went on at the t _rrr_ ack and field course," Anti-Cosmo said innocently. "Could've happened to anyone, really."

Dull lavender eyes turned in his direction. "I saw you cheat the fairy, you realize."

Suddenly aware of how far he was leaning to his right side, Anti-Cosmo lifted several inches in the air and recentered his balance. "Cheating? Do you actually wish to discuss cheating with an Anti-Fairy, H.P. old chap?"

"As it happens, I do not. I have been informed that it is only in your nature, and if you are too weak to overcome your basic instincts, that is none of my business. I shouldn't desire to be one of your kind if I were paid with the Fairy Elder's amulet of invulnerability."

"Ah, but at least _I'm_ not so undesi _rrr_ able that I've ever had the need to mate with myself."

He got a finger jabbed at his nose for that one. "That is incorrect information and you have no right to say such things."

"I will say whatever I like."

"If these are the sort of fingers you wish to begin pointing, A.C., I must tell you how grateful I am every day to recall that I at least wasn't forced to take the most dimwitted damsel in existence as my mate purely because the laws of the universe left me no choice. I pity you each morning and evening for how hard you were screwed over, dude. It can't be fun to be a member of the Unseelie Court."

Now it was Anti-Cosmo who flushed white. "Anti-Wanda has no place in this conversation! If you're going to challenge me, challenge me directly like a drake!" He _foop_ ed up a white glove and, with another swirl of his wand, smacked H.P. across the cheek with it. The glove disappeared again. It took the pixie a few seconds to react. Then, gingerly, he touched one hand to his face.

"Black cat got your tongue?" Anti-Cosmo hissed, drawing a few wingbeats away. In answer, H.P. flicked out the antenna of his cell phone and lunged with it. Anti-Cosmo ducked, drawing his own wand, and when he came up from his somersault he was just able to deflect the next hit. H.P., wings whipping, bore down on him, antenna scraping up and down the length of black wand as the pair wrestled to twist each other's weapon from their rival's grip, the way each of them had been taught in the War of the Angels, if on opposite sides. H.P. got a foot in the anti-fairy's stomach, and Anti-Cosmo hooked the clawed tips of his wings in the pixie's shirt.

"Ooh, if you knock me out of commission on what is supposed to be a day of neut _rrr_ ality, I can and will sue you millions, you boob!"

"Bad luck, punk."

As that very same bad luck would have it, Timothy came skipping towards them across the field. Fairy-Wanda, the baby, Scott Hamilton fully decked out in a pirate costume, and… one of the pixies? weren't far behind. The brat's eyebrows were up and slightly pinched, like he remained reluctant to trust either one of his enemies, and yet he still greeted them both with a buck-toothed smile.

Anti-Cosmo had grown fond of that smile. Though he loathed every injustice Timothy had forced him through or caused even indirectly, a deep part of him couldn't help but feel a slight affection towards the little chap even now. Something about the confident way he carried his head, perhaps, or how when the baby snuggled up to his cheek, he lifted one hand to hug it back. Must have been the stupid fagiggly gland transplant.

"Hey, guys," Timothy said, stopping a little out of arm's reach. "It's five minutes 'til cloud-diving starts. H.P., I drew Mr. Carmichael's name from my bowl, and I wanted to see that part in the contract where the judges are supposed to be impartial again before I gave him the official A-OK."

"That's a swell idea," chirped Anti-Wanda, offering a wave of hello to her counterpart (Fairy-Wanda reluctantly waved back). "We Anti-Fairies tend ta lie and cheat and prob'ly shoul'n't be trusted with any important contest-judgin', and neither ought them pointy-hatted gray peoples either, I s'pect."

"Avast, ye scruvy dogs!" Scott Hamilton drew a gleaming sword from his scabbard and swished it through the air. He clipped off the tip of Wanda's curl, and she set her teeth in alarm and dove for her baby. The sword was then aimed at Anti-Cosmo's chest. "If any of ye think yer cheating ways are more cheatsie than my pirate cheating, then I demand ye draw yer cheating weapons and stand forth so I may plunder your cheating floaty crowns."

"Did you guys want something?" Cupid hollered from across the field.

Anti-Cosmo used his wand to angle the sword away. "Oh, perish the thought, old boy. You'd need to challenge someone even less adept at waving that thing around than you are, and he's busy talking to Timothy."

"Dude," Timothy said, cutting off whatever sharp retort was about to leave H.P.'s lips. He pointed to the two shivering pixies in the grass. "What's with the butterfly net?"

The Head Pixie spared them a glance, then turned to look the boy squarely in the face. "They had an accident," he deadpanned.

"Didn't we have Jorgen make it part of Da Rules that butterfly nets were forbidden today, no exceptions?"

"If you read the fine print, they're forbidden only during the events themselves. Now, if you want to see the specifics, is there a place we could _ping_ to discuss that contract again?"

Wanda materialized above Timothy's shoulder, her purple son tucked under one arm. Her wand was drawn. "He's with me."

"We's all here with him," Anti-Wanda pointed out. H.P. raised one brow and lifted his arms to show her he would not resist her magic. They, the baby, Sanderson, and Scott Hamilton all vanished in a _poof_ of hot pink.

Hot was right. As the aftershock of fairy magic swept over his regularly-cold skin, sizzling and steaming as it came in contact with his dark fur, Anti-Cosmo slipped a handkerchief from a pocket of his vest and covered his nose with it.

"She did that on purpose," he grumbled, waiting impatiently for his body temperature to stabilize.

No answer from his wife. He turned his head. "Anti-Wanda, what is all this sulking nonsense? What's gotten into you? You look as though you were just forced to swallow a four-leaf clover."

She sniffled. "Didya see me while I was runnin', sweetie? Out on the field?"

Anti-Cosmo sighed. After tucking the handkerchief away, he took up her gnarled hands, clawed fingers folded around hers. "Yes, my tea crumpet. I saw you."

She brightened. "Even the part where I did the winnin' bit?"

"Heavens below, woman- Are you dafter than I thought? Of course I saw you! I'm the one who set you up so I could watch you claim victory. Is this what's been bothering you? You thought you hadn't made me proud somehow, despite the fact that you won the very first Fairy Games medal any Anti-Fairy in history has ever laid claim to? Dear, you have to tell me these things. I'm only Unseelie; you can't expect me to be capable of _rrr_ eading your mind. Come on." He put his finger below her chin and lifted it. "Tell me now, what might your doting husband pull together in order to bring that beautiful grin back to your pretty lips? Tick tock."

Anti-Wanda struggled to spark her brain cells together. "Well… I was really hopin' that maybe I could do the jumpy thing inta the pool when the time for that swings 'round us. D'ya think I could?"

This was a conundrum. He had already made arrangements to have Anti-Cupid perform the high-dive event. Elegance was not precisely one of Anti-Wanda's limited strengths.

But it remained a problem for all of one wingflap. Allowing himself to smile again, Anti-Cosmo kissed her nose.

"Little spider, I think you'll be perfect for it."


	7. (27) Fight or Flight?

_Summary:_ An interpretation of what Gary's desperate phone call to Sanderson might have been if the Musical weren't, well, a musical.

 _Characters:_ Sanderson, Gary, H.P.

 _Rating:_ K

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Out of Character" / "Loyalty"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **27\. Fight or Flight?** ("School's Out! The Musical")

 _Year of Leaves; Spring of the Last Berry_

* * *

The true secret to an assured victory of mind over matter was a little phenomenon known as moving forward without dwelling too much on the past. Successful people pour their entire soul into some piece of work they've taken on and loved, and upon its completion they continue on to the next project and avoid looking back at the old with the intention of regretting. They work because they love what they do, not because they plan to hover about awaiting praise.

Sanderson was in that state now as he leaned back against the side of the Head Pixie's private hot tub. It was purple, of course, from the material down to the foaming bubbles. And wooden too, which might not have been the best idea for beings with paper wasp genetics embedded in their DNA, but if the thing ever collapsed due to wearing, rotting, and/or chewing, they could always buy another one. Or _ping_ one up themselves, if they cared more about getting the thing fast and less about its quality. Come to think of it, that was almost certainly why the wooden one was up here in the first place.

Well, that and because it was one of the only wooden materials in the entire vicinity of company headquarters, and it wouldn't do not to keep _some_ thing of the sort around in case some poor pixie should happen to spill salt (Sanderson had had a bad encounter with an anti-selkie once) or - especially - step on a crack. While pixies didn't have biological mothers, the colony still had a biological _founder_ and _,_ well…

H.P. raised his white eyebrows above the bubbles as he readjusted himself against the opposite wall. "And thus, Sanderson… Here we are again. We finally rule all of Fairy World."

Not for long. No, both of them knew it, as surely as they knew Jorgen liked to dab mascara around his eyes for the dark and haunting circles it left like warpaint or that an old injury had left Anti-Cosmo always swerving much more to his right side than he really ought to when he flew too fast with the wind behind him. It was never for long. But it was the principle of the thing that kept them going, kept them picking one another up and dusting off the other's dirty clothes: Knock the Fairies around every once in awhile. Let them remember who else was here above the clouds. Try to beat the high score. Flappy had been running the world for three days straight now, and the old record had been two and a half.

"Yes, sir. The time has come. The deal's gone through."

Just as the last word left his mouth, his gray motorola let out a warning chirp in his hand. Perhaps he shouldn't have, but Sanderson allowed his content smile to fall into a grimace. Shaking off bubbles and flecks of wetness, he flipped the cover down and brought the phone to his ear.

"We're Pixies. Sanderson speaking." He wanted to add, "What's so important?" on the end, but he held his tongue. The screen said the call came from the Learn-a-Torium. They couldn't risk offending Flappy.

"Mr. Sanderson?" The words, pinched and high, tumbled out like sheets of paper from one of those printers that refused to stop after 'Cancel'. Worse, the ones swollen with wasteful full-color pictures. "I'd like to register a complaint. It's madness down here, sir- Complete and utter madness!"

"… Gary?"

He could almost see the redhead licking his lips, then rubbing the wetness away with the back of one wrist, the way he'd done for as long as Sanderson had known him. "Sir, they're everywhere!"

Sanderson's eyes slid up to meet H.P.'s. He bobbed unhappily among the bubbles. "What's that?"

"The children! They- they're everywhere! Flappy's gone mad. And that one Tucker or Turner kid you said we were supposed to keep an eye on, he disappeared somehow and then- _Betty_!" The phone clattered against stone. Gary must have dropped it, and the spiral cord had snapped it against the wall. His fumbling fingers gathered it up again. "Oh no, oh no, oh no. They got Betty with chains this time!"

"'This time'?"

"They tied us up with ropes half an hour ago, but we broke free!"

The pixie sat, silent. Gary forged on, gasping still.

"They're throwing food- that Aingeal girl started it- the redheaded one you sentenced to the kitchens, I mean- um, and the rich Tang girl threw a riot in the ballpit, and McBadbat's strung toilet paper all through the day care room, and then the Chang boy still hasn't come out from the supply closet as far as we know, but he kept screaming that he knew who was in charge 'up there' and he wanted to switch sides, and the mini black-haired Gary you said smells like he's made of fairy magic won't stop twisting the words to Flappy's songs and he's horrible at it, Mr. Sanderson, and there's this like little Indian kid and I don't know his name, but there were cookies baking, and, um, I think the younger Aingeal girl helped, and I met this girl and she was holding an enormous hairy brown spider up by only one leg and it was so gross."

"… The children are terrorizing you and Betty, even to the point where they tied you up and rubbed your skin raw with rope, and you still managed to escape and get this information to me before any of the pixies up here who are _supposed_ to be keeping an eye on things."

"D-don't get them in trouble because of us! I'm sure they're just busy doing other worky things."

Sanderson shook his head. The two humans simply radiated love and cheer the way a sprinkler sprayed water droplets, and not a single of his co-workers had ever been able to stand either one. Longwood especially enjoyed picking on them with random acts of double homework and cancelled sports games and botched dates- obviously because he knew it irritated Sanderson to no end.

They were his responsibility and his handful of rambunctiousness to deal with, but apparently Sanderson had never realized the full scope of disdain the other pixies felt for them. If they had ever asked him directly to choose sides, he'd stand with the rest of his kind without hesitation. He still would now if it were H.P. asking where his loyalties lay. But stabbing his innocent charges in the back in their own safe haven - and when there was a 37-year plan coming to fruition, no less! - was just asking for battle lines to be drawn across the conference room.

"How exactly has Flappy gone mad, Gary?"

"There are toys, and games, and the kids are just- just being _kids_! Acting up and eating dirt!"

"There's fun?"

"It's chaos, sir!"

The pixie pushed his shades up with one finger. "Gary, you and Betty realize that every last Pixie contract, including the Sanderson-becomes-your-legal-guardian agreement, contains an enormous loophole stating that you're allowed to leave a situation you ended up in due to following the contract when there is any obvious and immediate threat to your life or safety that we fail to protect you against, correct? And without any repercussions on your end, aside from the part where the contract is void and whatever magical involvement there was will be revoked. We've gone over this in great detail every year since you and Betty were eleven. If you're in real danger, you should evacuate the area."

"But… but I can't just leave! My shift doesn't end until seven."

"Of course it doesn't." Sanderson swapped the phone to his left ear while he popped a particularly large bubble that had settled on his elbow. "Well. I can _ping_ you both up here, but you need to realize that there is very little atmosphere surrounding Pixie World. You would both need to stay in the foyer and try to conserve your breath until we get this mess sorted out. No moving. No singing. The other pixies may not look at you as favorably as I do, but they would still be here if you should require anything at all. Do you understand?"

Gary's breathing slowed to mild panic. "No," he said, "No, no. Betty has her anxiety attacks, and they'll only be worse after how she got her… you know. Rosie and the gator? We'd have to explain- She'd be so confused- I can't do that to her."

"That's fine; _ping_ ing just one of you will be even easier, and it will probably be for the best because I'm not in the mood to explain everything to her again. Or, I could drop you off where Kenny is and the pair of you can watch each other's backs and make yourselves useful. I only need you to locate an area completely free of magical beings, constructions, and objects. We drained so much of the supply reshaping the Earth, and the lines have become somewhat muddled together. It wouldn't be safe to perform a teleportation, unless you don't mind the risk of losing an arm or having your eyes appear on your stomach. An empty field would be ideal, but anywhere on the street should do so long as you aren't too close to a-"

"I can't do that either, sir."

"Excuse me?"

"Betty's my friend. I won't abandon her." He swallowed. "She needs me."

Sanderson hesitated, listening to the cheers and screams in the background. "Gary, so long as you find a place that isn't supersaturated with leftover magic, I can also _ping_ you both to some other location elsewhere on Earth. But if things should become more chaotic, I'm not certain we could spare the pixies to look after you. Dimmsdale is soaked with magic now - the lines are dangling in loops everywhere - so I would need to drop you both a considerable distance away from the town without knowing when I could attend to you again. You might be completely alone to fend for yourselves, and that went so well when Turner's fairies sent you to Florida."

"No." Gary's voice grew a little firmer. "I won't just abandon Betty."

Perhaps that was just as well. Could they spare the time it took for them to flee to a cleaner location?

"But- but you still might want to do something quick, Mr. Sanderson! They're tearing the whole place apart from the inside out."

Even though Gary couldn't see it, Sanderson held up his hand. "Stay there. We'll come to you."

"Hurry!"

The rest of the message dissolved in screams as Gary went down beneath a mass of kids. Sanderson could hear their delighted chatter, voices layered one upon another so the words were indistinct. The phone was fumbled. Betty screeched his name. He finally ended the call with a snap.

"I take it he wasn't inviting us to lunch this time?" H.P. asked.

"Unfortunately not. It would seem Flappy is beginning to have second thoughts about ruling the world."

"Turner's gotten to him."

"I can't confirm that, but I would imagine that's a possibility, sir. Let's _ping_ on down and show who's the boss."

H.P. leaned his head back into the bubbles, sighing deeply through his nose. Then, swishing the water with a few flaps of his wings, he started to get up. "Well, Sanderson. In that case, let's be off. It's high time we wiped the smile off that clown's painted face anyway."


	8. (19) Open Your Eyes

_Summary:_ H.P. and Anti-Cosmo begin to panic when the baby they kidnapped has some breathing problems.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Cosmo, H.P., Poof, Sanderson, assorted pixies

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Back In Action" / "End of the World"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **19\. Open Your Eyes** ("Fairly Odd Baby")

 _Year of Soil; Winter of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

As its lashes fluttered, he clasped his hands and asked, "Well? So do you think it's a drake or a damsel?"

"From the contour of the cheeks and the thick lashes, it looks to be a damsel. But then, I'm not used to faces so round, so I may be mistaken and I request that you don't hold it against me."

"A damsel? _Rrr_ eally? Perhaps we had better check."

"Would you like me to take it outside where the light is better?" H.P. drawled, sarcasm edging every consonant.

Anti-Cosmo glanced around his dusty castle as he led the way from one gothic stone passage to the next. "It is, actually."

"Then if you really want to, you can." The Head Pixie handed the purple fairy baby, which had been playing with his glasses, over to one of the six or seven pixies that had been tailing them (for the longest time now they'd been squabbling with several of his Anti-Fairies over the fact that their cell phones didn't work on this side of the Divide, and they clearly weren't happy with switching to wands of polished stone instead of pixie metal or even fairy wood). That pixie then passed the baby along to Anti-Cosmo, and it opened its eyes and turned its attention instantly to his monocle.

"Please don't drop that, little one," he muttered to it as he brought the infant nearer one of the torches tucked in a wall sconce. "Anti-Fairies can't entirely see glass, you know, and on this stone floor in particular with all its many grooves, it will be a _rrr_ oyal pain to crawl about until I land a lucky hit. Oh." He looked back over his shoulder and, when the Head Pixie lifted one eyebrow, held up Fairy-Cosmo and Fairy-Wanda's baby again. "I've never seen, erm… reproductive characteristics like this before. Are you able to make out what it is? No- on second thought, don't tell me. I want it to be a surprise, at least for a little longer. But is that normal?"

"All members of the Seelie Court with its sex look like that," was H.P.'s patient reply. "You're Anti-Fairies and your reproductive systems are entirely different from ours." He held out his hands for the pup and waited for the High Count to take the lead again.

"Be certain we don't kill it by doing this," Anti-Cosmo insisted, pushing open the wooden door at the end of the next hallway. "Anti-Wanda and I have long awaited a child of our own, and it wouldn't really do if this one went dusty on us now. I don't expect we'll get another chance anytime soon."

"Sure."

Anti-Cosmo rubbed his stomach. "If it was born today, I suppose Anti-Wanda and I will have to get on that tonight, so let's hope we get through with this before the mating instinct switches to 'on', or there will be no stopping me. Literally nothing. If it needs to be, it's a power boost the universe cannot inhibit, no matter where she or myself is at the time. Oh, dear, I wish I could abuse that power on something else, but there's not an Anti-Fairy in the world who can resist it."

"Please stop talking. We have work to do."

But they both stopped talking when the fairy pup coughed and began to gasp. Its eyes slid shut and didn't open again.

"They didn't tie any magic lines into its core," the Head Pixie realized then, and Anti-Cosmo caught the quickened flutter in his wings. He twirled his wand and shrugged.

"Fairy-Cosmo is the father. What were you expecting?"

"And now it's asphyxiating." If he had been any creature besides a pixie, a note of panic might have crept into his voice. He shoved it towards Anti-Cosmo. "Here. Give it SHAMPAX. No- no, never mind. I doubt you've ever held a newborn Seelie Courter before today."

"I beg your pardon?"

Instead of explaining anything at all, H.P. lifted the round baby to his face and kissed its parted lips. The kiss went on, and Anti-Cosmo removed his monocle and squinted.

"Pardon, again? This is SHAMPAX?"

"Sharing Magic to Prevent Asphyxiation," one of the other pixies explained in usual monotone, leaning against the curve of an archway below with Anti-Juandissimo small and frumpy at his side. "He's draining his own magic supply to give it to the nymph."

Still perplexed, Anti-Cosmo squirmed until H.P. drew back his head. He wiped his lips clean and dry with his knuckles. Then he kissed the baby a second time. Anti-Cosmo hovered there, useless and bewildered.

"Anti-Fairies have no need to do anything of the sort. We cannot die while our opposites yet live, and we suck our magic supply from our counterparts through our core. I suppose… technically we would be capable of giving this SHAMPAX magic that way, d _rrr_ awing it out from our hosts, hm?"

H.P. hardly blinked as he lowered the baby, and its gaping mouth shut. The purple eyes fluttered open. It even smiled. "Never mind. This part is even less pleasant than the first, but I see I'll have to do it myself." Setting the baby on the floor, he unhinged his dome.

If Anti-Cosmo had been holding his favorite black cup to his mouth, he would have spurted tea everywhere. As it was, he simply snorted and hacked into his fist. "Oh- dear- Would you care for a p _rrr_ ivate room to do that?"

Several of the pixies, including the Head, twisted around and wrinkled their noses in puzzled sync. Like he was a pup for squealing and this _wasn't anything new to them_.

"You- you on occasion open your dome in front of your _employees_?"

"If I have the need, yes. My duties must come before social norms." H.P. reached above his open head, eyelids fluttering shut like curtains.

"Well, that's…" The High Count did his utmost to keep his face from flushing the same color as the baby's single curl of hair. "That's mildly inappropriate. Erm. If it bothers you, old chap, I can, er, see your core, you know."

He continued to hold his hands above his open head. "Yes, I imagine you can. Sanderson, hold my shoulder and ensure I don't crumple over onto the baby."

For one instant, the Head Pixie's eyes flared like moons. His pupils shrank to pen dots. They closed. His lips slipped and revealed two rows of stained teeth set together. It made Anti-Cosmo adjust his monocle. What was this strange power, that caused even the king of the Pixies to flinch with pain?

The moment passed. He opened his eyes, and they were glowing lavender. With his right hand, the Head Pixie slid his glasses further up his nose. Something in his left hand… wriggled. Reality distorted. The air rippled. The thing was a sort of cord or straw. Anti-Cosmo lifted his brows, and this time he didn't need to ask. So this was one of those magic lines that plugged into the energy field and kept his people's hosts alive and therefore their Anti-Fairies too.

Sanderson held out his hand with the air of one who had witnessed this many times before. The Head Pixie handed him the shifting strip and spent a moment blowing more magic into the baby's mouth, which had parted again with another gasp, before reaching above his head once more. He plucked a second time, and again cringed. Sanderson took that one too. When H.P. had snapped three lines from his own head, he took the others back and lifted open the baby's forehead dome.

Out of plain curiosity, Anti-Cosmo signaled to one of the other nearby pixies. "Why does he need three?"

The pixie beat his wings and flew up to join him. "Three is standard. Nymphs only have one large tie-spot. Stopping at one line is essentially begging for asphyxiation, two lines can slip out, and four is too crowded for the spot and leads to dragging the others down with it. With three you can braid, and weaving makes a stronger central tube."

"What happens if the Head Pixie drops them?"

"He… picks them up?"

"He can hardly see them, can't he?"

The pixie gave him a rumpled sideways glance. "You might see a little better yourself if you flip your eyes backwards into your field-sight, sir. The Head Pixie and Sanderson have theirs on. You can tell it by the way their sockets are glowing that light violet color."

"Ah. I've heard of it, but Anti-Fairies don't have field sight, chap. Because we don't need to perform complex birth _rrr_ ituals like you Seelie Courters do, I would imagine it simply isn't an ability we're allowed to inherit."

The pixie actually removed his shades to stare, displaying lavender eyes identical to Sanderson's and the Head Pixie's. "Then… How do you _mate_?"

Anti-Cosmo glanced away from Sanderson, who had picked up the baby to give it another round of SHAMPAX while the Head Pixie worked. "Pardon?"

" _I_ actually went to public school." He said it with such great pride, Anti-Cosmo half expected him to whip his diploma out from one of the inner pockets of his gray jacket.

" _You_? A pixie drone?"

"This was long ago. I was called a fairy then. When non-Anti-Fairies-"

"Seelie Courters."

"What?"

"My apologies. Force of habit. Continue. I'm curious."

"… When members of the Seelie Court mate, their lines thread together until they have one big shared tube that gives them both enough magic to go through with procreation. If they didn't link up, the resulting tingle-fritziness would snap all their lines from the energy field and kill the drake before they made it very far. The influx of warm magic stirs up the frozen eggs so one of them can be fertilized. It's kind of important. How does it work if your people don't have magical lines? Your drakes still have eggs, don't they? Er… your damsels, I mean?"

"You know an awful lot about the universe for a mere pixie." It made Anti-Cosmo scratch his left elbow and tongue his right cheek. "We don't get tingle-fritzy. And we mate upside-down, of course." Grateful to be the smarter one again, he flapped his bat wings hard for emphasis. "Warm magic _rrr_ ises, but Anti-Fairy magic is naturally cold. That's why we can't stay upright for too long lest we get dizzy- rather than draw it from the surroundings through our pores and upward to our core, we pull it through the core we share with our host and it flows down through the rest of our bodies. Of course, this means it doesn't pool around our core unless we force it. Makes our magic weaker and us sick and cranky. So, to answer your mating question, when we're upside-down with our domes open, our magic spills downward. After it is in the air for several precise seconds, it warms and rises and our mate can catch it in her dome. P _rrr_ esto. Step two of copulation is complete."

The pixie blinked and flitted back to his sentry post with a shake of his head. Good riddance to it. It spoke proper English far too well for what he'd heard of its kind. Anti-Cosmo waited in silence as the Head Pixie's fingers completed what appeared to be an invisible braid. Sanderson briefly shut the pup's dome and held the thing to his mouth, and when he was finished and had popped it open again, the Head Pixie took it back and made another few tying motions. A moment or two later, the dome was shut for good. The pale violet glow in their eyes flickered away, and both of them sat back on their knees with their hands braced against the marble floor, and they were the ones panting.

Anti-Cosmo landed with a light pat one foot after the other and folded up his leathery wings. "Are you now in a fair condition, or will I be needing to attempt giving the pair of you your SHAMPAX?"

The Head Pixie held up one finger. Once another minute of crouching in silence had flickered by, during which the baby cooed and strained its wings, he opened his dull eyes again and said, "That isn't necessary. We'll both recover within half an hour. It simply takes a lot out of you."

"You clearly knew what you were doing, old sport. You've had pups before, haven't you?"

The Head Pixie stared at him, incredulous, as he pushed himself up to his feet. "For being Fairy-Cosmo's opposite, you're quite less intelligent than your brother at times, aren't you?"

Insulted, Anti-Cosmo stepped back. "I- I know you are all genetically identical. It's not as though there was ever anyone here to explain the details to me. I was a _wee tad busy_ taking over my _rrr_ ole as High Count from where Anti-Bryndin left off. There are hardly five hundred of your kind in all of the universe. That's badger dribble, chap. There are more subspecies of interplanetary pond scum. Literally _nobody_ cares two flaps about you or your people beyond the cont _rrr_ ibutions you make to the business world. I always assumed you mated with some brownie damsel or something and then-"

"I'm not a brownie-kisser."

"… and then formulated clones of the resulting pup through pure magic every so often when you had an open position in your offices and enough energy to spare. They're simple-minded d _rrr_ ones of yours, bred only to serve. One wonders at times if they can so much as scrape together a single innovative idea amongst the lot of them. I know that much. Was Sander-?"

"Sanderson is not my son. I don't have any sons. Only employees." He clicked his fingers twice at Sanderson, whose expression hadn't changed throughout the discussion, and the smaller pixie scooped the fairy pup into his arms. Its eyes had opened, cheery and bright. "Now that the nymph will not be asphyxiating on us, where would you like us to bring it? You said you'd been designing a special sort of inner-magic-draining machine during the month Cosmo Prime was missing?"

Hmph. With a backwards toss of his hands, Anti-Cosmo lifted his wings again. "That is correct, H.P. _Rrr_ ight this way. I've prepared quite a lovely nursery just for this purpose. Tally ho!"


	9. (117) Tools of the Trade

_Summary:_ Poof and Goldie, young teenagers, bump into Foop and Anti-Marigold when filling out the paperwork for their new wands.

 _Characters:_ Poof, Goldie, Foop, Anti-Marigold, H.P., Binky, Steve

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Unwelcome" / "Shadow"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **117\. Tools of the Trade** (Post-series)

 _Year of Fire; Summer of the Orange Dawn_

* * *

Poof slammed the stack down with a thud on the faded pink bricks of the road. "I can't _believe_ how much paperwork is involved in this. And out in this heat. How long's it been now?"

Goldie took out her bronze pocket watch. "About seven minutes."

"Urrrrggghhh…"

" _But_ , it'll all be worth it to get yourself that fresh new wand of your dreams."

"Right. My thundersnap kitnut. Gee, you're lucky your mama started you on a training wand that actually looks the part. I grew way too attached to my rattle, and I miss it already."

"I know ya do, sweetie-bell." The will o' the wisp handed him another purple pen. "But the new one'll grow on ya. Bet it'll feel perfect in your hand the first time you pick it up."

He knelt down on the rough ground beside her, scratching at his purple ponytail. "If it doesn't, I'm returning it. I'll be the only Fairy who's ever gone all these centuries and still refused to make the switch. I can accept that. It's not a phase. It's who I am."

She barely suppressed a giggle behind her tight lips, and Poof smiled back and rearranged his wings. Oh, how badly he wanted to _poof_ off and grab them both a snack of apples and juice to cool off. But for security reasons, the Pixies had ordered a lock-down of all loose magic on the entire block. Poof could only pray that the wands had all been tested beforehand. It wasn't that he worried the pixies would screw him over. After all, the wands had been crafted by Fairy hands- the Pixies were only here because they could smell paperwork from eighty cloudlengths away. No, Poof was praying because if he had to come back and fill all those forms out again, he was going to yank out his own teeth.

"I haven't seen Daxton today," he noted as he took up the first sheet of the second batch. "We were supposed to meet him here and then go for ice cream later, right?"

She glanced about. A couple of young Fairies dotted the square - most of them faces they both had gone to school with - but there weren't a terrible lot of them. "I think he came up yesterday with most of the crowd. How's Sparky- I haven't asked for awhile."

"Just being Sparky. He can't stop digging, even through the clouds. But hey, that's what they were bred for."

Goldie signed her name on every line without reading any of it. "I think it's real sweet that your parents let ya still keep the dog, even when he's old enough to ste…"

She trailed off. Poof soon realized why. He was getting that familiar ache between his wings- the one he always developed when all the magic in the surrounding energy field turned chilly and began to curdle. He flapped out the collar of his pale green jacket and slit his eyes.

"Would you look at what the black cat dragged in."

"Ah, dear. I was really hoping we'd be on our way by the time those two showed up."

"Does he look more vengeful than normal to you?"

"Poof, hon, he was born with more than a couple a' cactus needles shoved up his behind."

He put a hand to his temple and grimaced. "I said I was sorry. But if he had to steal _some_ thing of my baby personality…"

Foop came sauntering across the square as if he'd just been informed about the shattering of a whole semi-truck carrying mirrors. With his black lab coat tails flapping behind him, he looked like he'd been dragged out here in the middle of one of those weird experiments he was always working on back at his father's castle. Eight inches of papers were stacked up in his arms. Anti-Goldie was even easier to spot with the crimson eyespots on her flared moth wings and fur so blue, it carried a purple tinge. She picked her way after him, and her arms were empty. So that explained Foop's double load. When they drew close, Poof mimed a kick at the both of them. Foop must have been anticipating this, because he stopped well out of reach and bore his fangs in a smirk.

"Hello, bath bomb and mothball. I hope you recognize that I greet you unarmed. Nonetheless, I would not go about provoking me in your place. The very fact that I have wasted so much of my day thus far here in this sickeningly pretty corner of Fairy World has left me utterly miserable, and I shall be quick to strike out against anyone who thinks they can make me feel otherwise."

"Welcome to the club."

Goldie's orange and cream wings gave a few warning flutters. "Now, boys…"

Foop had the decency to spare her a glance as he brushed at the front of his blue sweater vest. "Warm and fuzzy greetings to you too, wisp. You know, even now that the 'anti' part of your core has manifested outside of you, I am still admittedly partial to you as a person and for the capable level of intellect you demonstrate in our Da Rules class. You ought to come to my birthday party on the eighteenth. Splendid event. Don't bring your purple saucerbee captain."

"It twists my heart to say, but I must turn down your generous offer, Floop. Though I do enjoy some nice chocolate cake."

Anti-Goldie chuckled. "Oh, sheila, that ain't no secret."

Goldie's face turned pink like Mama's hair. She looked down at her shoes. A sharp ember boiled in Poof's stomach. He turned his attention back on his own counterpart.

"Call off your dog, Foop. We're all miserable in this heat as it is, so instead of pouring salt in the wound and then sending bad luck after it, let's all sit down, shut up, and work hard so we can all get out of here before dinner. Why do they even _hand_ wands out to Anti-Fairies?"

The claw at the tip of Foop's left wing gave a slight twitch. "Oh, grow up, Mr. Popular. There are more people in the world than just you. Your species isn't the only one cursed to suffer from magical backup, and we have our unalienable rights too."

"I've never understood why the Fairy Council allowed that law to pass. There could stand to be a few less Anti-Fairies sucking up all the magic."

"Says the member a' the most frivolous species known ta the Seelie Court," Anti-Goldie grunted.

Foop nodded. "Exactly. What she said. And it's 'fewer', actually."

The fairy stuck his round nose in the air. "Well, at least I can stay awake through a lullaby."

"At least I can fall asleep without a nightlight brighter than Dante's inferno."

Poof's eyelids flew open. Giggles and snorts whizzed around him from those who had joined them in the relative shade, but his old classmates smothered themselves as he locked eyes with Foop for the first time. The anti-fairy was in another of those real cocky moods (When wasn't he?) and displayed this… this typical 'alpha drake' factor. Even Cosmo couldn't have missed the challenge there. Poof pulled his favorite blaster from his pocket.

"Wait," Goldie said, "you brought a laser gun?"

Foop mirrored him with the match of the set from one of the folds of his coat.

"You wily wallabies _both_ brought laser guns?" Anti-Goldie asked, no less surprised.

"What do you expect?" Poof grunted back, taking aim. "No magic allowed." Then he had to duck as Foop's gun loaded first and fired a flaming streak of blue inches from Poof's right ear. It buried itself into the bricks beside Steve the leprechaun (or one of the identical O'Terrae brood, anyway), setting his papers alight. One of his three lookalikes and a half-elf girl that Poof didn't recognize stamped it out with a wooden shoe.

"Yes, that's not magic," Goldie noted dryly. She returned to her paperwork while her counterpart hovered over her shoulder, tugging on her ears or pouring out dark ink over the printed words. After five or six minutes, the two drakes had exhausted either themselves, or their blasters.

"Renew the truce?" Poof asked, tossing his aside.

"Renew the truce." Then Foop turned around, and his face pinched. "Kelsia, you blithering moron- look at what dastardly fate you've brought upon my paperwork! What did it ever do to you?"

She offered him an origami kangaroo. "You know I craft when I'm bored, mate."

Poof poked his counterpart with his elbow, still adjusting his blue headband with his free fingers. "Looks like between the two of us, I have the better girlfriend."

"Don't give me that!" Foop's tone rose to a sudden shriek. "You're the reason I'm scoffed at for dating outside my own species in the first place! An _anti-will o' the wisp_ , of all races. My father has already threatened to disinherit me over it."

" _Your_ parents have threatened to disinherit you? I haven't even _told_ my Mama. She'll go off the lip."

Foop's scowl switched position. "Is that so? Well, perhaps Kelsia and I will just have to pay a visit up to Faeheim."

Wings thrumming, Poof brought his forehead close enough that his curl risked tangling with Foop's. "Don't you dare."

"My, my- forgive me, your majesty, but no one told me to take off my crown in the presence of the comeback king."

"You've got a lot of nerve for someone who still looks like a talking lunchbox."

"Ooh, them's fighting words, Mr. Popular."

"Cute- You learn your vocabulary from your mother?"

Foop's pupils shrank to the size of bacteria. He shoved his counterpart backwards and flared his wings behind him in a great swoop. "I do not have to stand here and take this from a brownie-blood who still sculpts with Play-Doh and sleeps with a glowing teddy bear."

"Then don't get up. Easy."

Amid the round of "Oooohh!"s, Foop snapped one of Anti-Goldie's origami hermit crabs to Steve's throat. "The leprechaun will pay dearly for this! Don't test me!"

Someone cleared his throat in monotone. "Might I beg your boys' pardon?"

" _What_?" they snarled.

The pixie folded his arms and seemed to look them up and down behind his shades. "I thought you might like to know that your first batch of paperwork has been green-lighted, and once you finish with the second half and if everything should continue to be in order, your wands will be waiting to be picked up at the front table at your convenience."

"All right. Fine. This is fine. We're all fine. We'll settle this outside of the lock-down zone later." Tugging on the collar of his lab coat, Foop cast a sideways look his captive's way. "By the way, don't you have to give me forty-nine pieces of your gold if I agree to let you go?"

Steve jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the nubby wings he had but that Poof always forgot about. "Not if I am only half a leprechaun. Why did you think I was all the way in the eastern skies filing for a wand?"

Individually seething, fairy and anti-fairy returned to their work and raced one another to the end. Foop was evidently at least a bit reluctant to scrawl his name on a Pixie contract (even an origami one) without first scanning what exactly he was getting into, but Poof had glanced over the paper and thought it looked standard enough, and so it was easily he who came out victorious in the end. Goldie had patiently waited for him, and the pair walked together to the opposite corner of the square.

Upon stepping into the shade of the cloth pavilion, Poof regarded the Head Pixie with unease. Along with Foop's dad, this man had kidnapped him not even an hour after he'd been born and tried to extract his uninfluenced magic. Poof had no memories of that day, but he'd heard the stories from his parents and that pink-hatted godkid who had wished him into existence. The Head Pixie raised one eyebrow at Poof's approach like he recognized him, but didn't take his hands off the table. At least he had Binky and Nova sitting with him, so it wasn't like he'd been left unsupervised.

H.P. and one of the other pixies skimmed through all the signed papers while Poof drummed his nails against the table. "Which wand is which?" Foop asked, puffing his cheeks at the stack of white boxes as he and Anti-Goldie at last came scrambling up with crumpled papers in hand.

"Fairy." H.P. tapped the first box. "Will o' the wisp. Anti-fairy. Anti-will o' the wisp. They're yours, if you just sign here."

Unlike the stacks explaining the insurance policy and clarifying chinks and details and dangers, this paper was simply a confirmation that Poof had received the proper wand on the correct date, and under what conditions he was allowed to return it if it did not meet his satisfaction. Binky offered an encouraging nod, so he took up the pen and signed. Once he had, H.P. shuffled the paper beneath the second one in the pile.

"And here. And… one last time right here. That's it. You're free to go." He got a finger flutter and a crisp, "Have a splendid day." Then the pixie picked up an origami shark and tilted down his glasses. "What exactly is this?"

Foop made a swinging motion across his chest with a bent arm and smiled an enormous fake smile. "Well, it's obviously a testament to the vicious yet misunderstood nature of the Pixie race and not a hunk of paper that got licked by an anti-will o' the wisp and is now completely impossible to unfold."

"I'm not saying 'Sorry'."

Poof pulled back as H.P. turned his attention on the Anti-Fairies. All Fairy wands were tipped with a star of hollow topaz and filled with rosewater for prime magic channeling, but the rest of it had been custom-made. The body was a husk of kitnut wood. It fit snugly in his palm. Smooth, but not slippery. Supposedly, the center of balance had been modeled like a gyroscope, so it would never roll off a table or tip over if he stood it upright. He'd requested a padded grip. An expensive piece, but his parents hadn't guilted him about it once. "It's your first one and it should be exactly what you want, sweetie," Mama had pointed out, and Dad had chimed in with a cheerful, "It's not like _we_ haven't replaced ours a couple dozen times in the last few centuries, either."

The fairy found a place to stand in the shade-that-wasn't-the-dark-kind-of-shade. "So shiny," he murmured, rubbing his thumb over and over against the topmost point.

"So heavy," Foop said as he (finally) wandered over, weighing his own in his hand. "But regardless, it will all be worth it in the end. Really, this isn't at all shabby, but pure obsidian does that."

"Is that the Anti-Fairy version of kitnut wood?"

"Your zinflax, if I am not mistaken. I did do my research, unlike a certain purple twit who bailed on me during our chemistry project in Twenty-Fourth Year. I don't have to be the polar opposite of you in every little respect."

"Consider it payback for all those times you made me cover for us in history."

Foop dropped one fist into his cupped palm. "Learning about history that doesn't relate to war or the weaknesses of your world bores me."

Poof shrugged. "Same. And come to think of it, I never did thank you for the tutoring in biology."

"I do happen to like biology," he admitted with the tap of a claw on his temple.

"And now here we are, halfway through our schooling years, with these things freshly tuned with all five bars. What's your analysis, Professor Foop? Think they could use a trial run?"

Foop spun the black wand between his fingers- a trick he had never been capable of performing with his bottle. "Oh, you know it, puffball. Let's say we hit up Colorado. The magic field there has been too smooth and quiet for too long. It could use a few patches and tangles, don't you think so? We could make the whole of Leadville our fair playground."

"And we take turns slamming each other with all we've got until one of us admits defeat?"

"That," Foop agreed, "or passes out."

"I like the way you think."

"It's you. You'll be the one passing out."

"You know, I learned a new lullaby the other day and it's been stuck in my head ever since."

"Lovely! I learned how to summon enough clouds and wild winds to darken an entire saucerbee stadium."

"Boys," Goldie sighed from her place at the table. She'd let her counterpart cut ahead of her, because that was the sort of good soul she had.

Foop only chuckled. "First to collapse or break for lunch owes the winner a month of tickets to the bouncy castle in Cherishville?"

"Better bring your game face, Rubik's cube."


	10. (4) Mama's Boy

_Summary:_ Anti-Cosmo and Cosmo Prime have very different yet similar home lives.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Cosmo, Cosmo, Anti-Florensa, Mama Cosma, Schnozmo, Anti-Robin

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Now I'm Perfect" / "Deceit"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

 _A/N_ \- Currently labeling this as "tentatively canon"; some things may need to be retconned depending on where my Anti-Cosmo backstory 'fic _Frayed Knots_ goes.

* * *

 **4\. Mama's Boy** (Pre-series)

 _Summer of the Red Rabbit - Spring of the Early Groundhog_

* * *

"You idiotic pup!" She shoved him into the ground and planted her high-heeled shoe at the place where his throat blended into his collarbone. Suppressing his startled sniffle, he braced his palms against the stone floor, and she leaned down to tweak his nose and went on. "How it is that you can be so brilliant one moment before turning around and proving yourself so completely daft is beyond me."

* * *

"I love you." She took his hand and brought him to his feet. Giving into his thick snifflings, he buried his nose in her chest, and she leaned down to push her fingers through his green hair and went on. "No matter what those scoundrels spit at you, you'll always be my precious snookypop. How it is that you fail to understand how much you mean to Mama is beyond me."

* * *

"Proper form," she scolded, hitting her rod against the base of his spine another several times. "Sit up straight. Only commoners slouch. Honestly, you know better than that. You're a proper color-eye, and I expect you to act like one."

* * *

"Would you like a third cookie, love?" she persisted, drawing the bed covers up to his neck and fluffing his pillow another several times. "Lie down a little more. You'll freeze your neck stiff. Honestly, there's no need for you to be this tense. You're having a sick day, and you ought to rest your pretty head now."

* * *

Just as he was ducking through the doorway, she swept down, caught his wings in her claws, and slammed him flat against the hallway ceiling. His right wing twisted beneath him in an awkward way and with an unfamiliar pop.

"You will roost upside-down like a proper Anti-Fairy, and you will do it without complaint. Do you want to end up goody-goody like your brother?"

His wing sagged when she replaced him on the floor, but though it stung, he hastily lifted it before she could notice.

* * *

Just as he was ducking through the doorway, she swept up, caught the nape of his neck in her fingers, and yanked him back on her side of the threshold. His whole body drooped beneath him, and after another courageous second, he landed on the floor and lowered his wings.

"You'll only be causing trouble for the whole town if you go chasing after the Fairywinkle girl. Do you want to end up disappearing like your brother?"

His tongue burned as he reached to rub his left arm, but though it stung, he swallowed his protests before she could notice.

* * *

"You shouldn't be loitering about the manor reading these daft books all night and day. You'll ruin your pretty eyes. Go on, get out."

* * *

"You shouldn't be this far from the house without telling Mama. Dear, why would you want to set foot out there in the cruel world? Come on, step inside."

* * *

"You have to present. I asked you to clean up. What happened? And however did you get that limp in your right wing?"

He frowned. "I'm afraid I must confess that I don't know, Mother. It's simply always been that way."

Truthfully he didn't know, even when he thought hard. On occasion when he did dwell on it, Anti-Cosmo had passed the injury off as something the Fairy-Cosmo had left him with. However, if fairy wings were so thin, boneless, and fragile, was that possible?

"And while I'm waving for wishes, blast your damaged eyesight t'boot. What are we going to do with you? They sell special tinted rocks you can wear over one eye, don't they? That will have to do. With your frivolous brother tossing cash to every satyr and redcap to cross his path, we can't afford those newfangled double 'glasses' like _some_ red-suited nellypodgers I might mention."

* * *

"You're a dashing young drake, Cosmo. I wish you didn't have to do this. Drag us out here to war and that rubbish, why I oughta…"

He smiled. "I don't know, Mama. I think it's nice to get out of the house for a change."

The line to the washrooms thinned in front of him. After mother and son had each finished, they parted. But as he said his goodbye and skimmed across base camp to join Schnozmo in their bunker, Cosmo squirmed inside his stomach. He didn't like this fighting business and wanted to see its end.

"And while fishes swim," he sighed, watching a certain tan-skinned drake and a damsel with a single pink curl spun in the front of her hair gab and giggle, "just blast me with muscles and dark hair like that."

His big brother, sewing a white button to the heel of his sock, shook his head when he came scampering up. "What is she gonna do with you? They sell leashes for mamas who wanna keep tabs on their silly nymphs all along the days, don't they? Ha ha…"

* * *

"You _can't_ just overthrow an entire government in one morning."

He snarled. "Just watch me."

* * *

"Thirty percent on an exam isn't so bad, baby. You'll pick up on it eventually."

He sighed. "Just watch me."

* * *

"But we can't let my mother find out, you dimwitted twit," he groaned as he weaseled (literally) through her window. _Foop_ ing back to normal, adjusting his monocle, he held out his hands towards hers. "Show me the transformation homework and let's get on with this."

* * *

"I can't wait for you to get to meet my mama tonight," he crowed as he rocketed (literally) down the cherry-colored street. _Poof_ ing back to normal, weaving between startled passersby, he tightened his grip on her hand. "She's really going to love you so much!"

* * *

Anti-Cosmo watched in dread as brown dots of warm tea bled down the vertical bars over his bedroom window. Replacing the cup on its saucer with a clink and setting the both of them up on the mantle, he turned around. "My dearest apologies, Mother. What was that?"

"Exactly what you heard. I don't care how you protest. The arrangements have already been set in place. You are to be marrying Anti-Wanda come Friday. No arguments."

* * *

Cosmo pulled down his upper lip and sucked on it as refracted orange rays of the neighboring sunlight disappeared from his window glass. Nudging the curtains open with a rustle and then bringing both shut again, he turned around. "Do you really mean it, Mama?"

"Every word. I don't care how many times she's told you she thinks she's ready to begin your courtship dance. You are not marrying that Wanda girl. No arguments."

* * *

"Your respective counterparts obviously tied their knot three months ago, seeing as only last week you went and paired with her."

According to the shiny surface of the fireplace, his entire face had flushed purple. He shielded his neck and mouth with his hands. "That's not _my_ fault, Mother. I know you and Father were wed long before the Divide was in place and you knew of your inevitable pai _rrr_ ing in advance, but this is the way most Anti-Fairies do it. Simply put, I haven't done a thing wrong."

The stick- he dodged- explosion of expensive glass objects that had once belonged to Anti-Bryndin. "I won't have her be your mistress, son of mine. I will have her be your wife."

* * *

"Well! Look who thinks he's big enough to leave the mound. Where are you going, punk? I thought your mommy didn't let you out after stars-out. Or during daylight."

Cosmo pulled the hood of his white sweatshirt further over his head, covering most of his signature green hair tuft. Gnass was one of his old bullies. Bullies the War of the Angels had taught him to ignore- Anti-Fairies were much scarier. The imp leaned against the side of the dirty brown stone wall around the town of Emper, just owl-eyed and tapping his antennae together in musical rhythm.

"Um…"

"Got milk in the bag there?"

"Y-yeah?"

"Whatcha gonna do when you run out, dweeb?" Gnass made a spiral motion around his ear. "I thought fairies with mutations like yours couldn't channel magic without it. Didn't think of that, did you? Maybe you would've if you'd gone to Spellementary with the rest of us, huh?"

* * *

Anti-Cosmo stamped his foot. "I won't do it."

Her palm snapped against his cheek, sending him recoiling towards the fireplace. He might have toppled straight into the rippling flames if he hadn't been swift at beating his wings. As it was, he singed the tails of his coat.

"Mother, this is _my_ castle, and you have no _rrri_ ght to impose yourself upon me any longer."

Then her staff came down hard against his right wing, fixing him to the stone wall. "You're going to marry Anti-Wanda, and that's final."

He held her gaze. Through grinding fangs, he managed, "Yes, Mama."

* * *

"And _that's_ what I do ta guys who pick on my li'l bro. Two words: Scrambled. Beet. Surprise."

While Gnass bolted, holding his singed behind, Cosmo took his shaking wrists from over his nose. The other green-haired drake swung down from the wall. "Sch-Schnozmo? Hey, what gives?" The hands came down. "I could've handled that."

Schnozmo crossed his arms. "Two words: I liked seeing you try. I just zipped by home to grab something for an _old_ friend, and I'm off again before you can say 'Throw down your wand and put your hands behind your head'. Does Mama know you're out here?"

Hesitation- stuttering- wincing-

"What's in the pack?" he asked with a nod.

"Just my milk?"

"Ha. Ha ha." Schnozmo held up a white tuxedo and a wedding boutineer flower. "Two words: I think you might have dropped this."

* * *

The day of his wedding, supposedly alone in his bedroom, Anti-Cosmo whipped around and fired a bolt of blue electricity. The older Anti-Fairy deflected it off the handle of his wand and evaporated the blow in a shower of pale, harmless sparks. Flint, then- only flint wands could do that, or ones of gingertie wood among the Seelie.

"Easy, easy." The newcomer tossed his wand with a clatter at the ground by Anti-Cosmo's feet. "If I had shown up to injure you, I would not have tipped a book off your shelf to alert you to my presence beforehand. You and I both know my greatest strength is silence. I just came to talk. Your mother knows I'm here."

Anti-Cosmo grimaced without lowering his own wand of pumice. Quite the recharge time on that material - longer than any other - and he fretted silently that his opponent would remember and come back with a sharp strike before he himself was prepared to retaliate. He also wished he'd thought to bring along his slingshot. "Anti-Bryndin. What a surp _rrr_ ise to run across you here. Had a lovely flight, I hope."

The previous High Count licked a clawed finger. He touched it first to his square nose, then his goatee. Finally, running it down each of his long, sharply-bent horns, he pushed himself up from the desk. Anti-Cosmo shifted away, wings spread in a leathery umbrella, not turning his back.

* * *

"I can't go back," Cosmo pleaded as Schnozmo half-carried and half-dragged him up the front porch steps. "I'm getting married, and I'm running away forever- Wanda won't like it if I'm late to our secret meeting spot at the west entrance of Fairystone Park!"

Anti-Schnozmo pointed at the backpack. "Two words: You're a moronic idiot. I'm not letting my brother go anywhere without packing food and plenty of milk. The only thing in there is that fancypants suit of yours."

"Ah! You can't sell it! I need it!"

"But you could chip a fair buck tooth on that rag. Did you drain your whole life savings on it, smoof?"

When the only response was a choking gasp, Schnozmo shook his head and shoved the younger fairy back into the Cosma household.

* * *

"This castle is no longer yours. You stepped down after your maggot-d _rrr_ izzled pound cake lost us the first bake-off after the war, old friend."

"You came and have threatened me with an outright coup."

"I did have the support of the people at my heels," Anti-Cosmo admitted. His wand shivered in his hand, alerting him that it was ready to perform another blast, if it was a small one. He refrained.

Anti-Bryndin replaced the blue teacup on what had formerly been his mantle. "Have you the thought, Anti-Cosmo, that our people become supportive of your High Countess who has tiny marble-sized brain rolling around between her unpointed ears? I thought your mother did raise you better than that."

"She's my pair. I have no choice."

Lazy shrug from the anti-swanee. "Of course you have choices, if you can be willing to play very dirty. Wed someone else. Keep her as your mistress upstairs, or outside in silo for grain. That's what I did with mine."

 _What_? And imprison her? That wouldn't be very fair- Anti-Wanda almost certainly wouldn't understand what was happening, really. She'd been delighted the night he'd shown up at her father's house to ask for her hand. She'd _kissed_ him, and meant it, even when the honey-lock instinct had faded away. Nobody ever kissed him. Anti-Cosmo leveled his wand, and the end glowed a deep sapphire.

"My mother raised me quite right. My wife deserves better than that. Get. Out."

* * *

The day of his wedding, supposedly alone in his room, Cosmo flinched at the sound of his window swinging open.

"Hey Schnozmo, why didn't you just come through the front door? Is the doorbell broken? I can make doorbell noises. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck-"

Schnozmo pinched his lips. "Two words: I don't want Mama knowing I'm here yet." Letting go, he flew to the trunk at the end of his brother's bed and began hurling out various shirts. "Let's get you packed. Then I'll show up and distract her, and you can slip out the door, eh?"

Cosmo scratched his collarbone. It had been difficult enough earlier just catching a moment when she wasn't fawning over him. "Uh, and- and what if she asks where I went? I don't think she'll forget about me."

"I'll tell her you went to get milk from the market or something. Now, why don't you _poof_ us down to the kitchen, brother? Two bonus words: Schnozmo needs a bite."

"Um… No problem. One carton of delicious, creamy, milky goodness, coming right up."

* * *

Anti-Cosmo peeked between the two tall curtains. Cobwebs coated every dark corner, just the way he'd wanted. Adelinda and Jorgen von Strangle were there in the back row of the pavilion. The Head Pixie and one of his underlings sat up front right beside Anti-Schnozmo's empty seat. And, for the ridiculous reason of, "He wanted to", his soft brother had unlocked the gate to Anti-Pixie Isle and allowed Anti-Sanderson (Terribly sorry- the not-quite-official-but-supposedly-soon-to-be Head Anti-Pixie) to join them.

Anti-Schnozmo himself floated above Anti-Cosmo, finishing a touch here, one there, one there. Anti-Cosmo wore a dark flowing cape made from crows' feathers, lined on the insides with the pale skin of dead rodents. He tilted back his head and breathed it all in. Ready or not.

* * *

He never forgot. Cosmo made his deliberate way down the stairs, walking and not flying. The small backpack thumped against his wings, painlessly crushing them. When he reached the bottom, then on cue, Schnozmo rapped his signature knock all over the door.

His mama stiffened.

Cosmo realized too late that it wasn't going to work. He slipped on the bottom step, then whipped around and fled back to the safety of his bedroom as quickly as he could. Plugging his ears blocked out almost half the screaming and the ranting.

He pushed open his window and looked down. It wasn't a long fall, but he hesitated nonetheless. He'd never jumped from a place this high before. Not when his wings were left useless like this. Not when it meant he had to hit the hard purple grass.

Wanda was waiting. Squeezing shut his eyes and keeping his mouth clamped, even when he could predict the way his landing might twist his leg, he took the plunge.

* * *

He never forgot. Anti-Cosmo made his deliberate way down the aisle, walking and not flying. The tails of his cape flipped and spun around his ankles. His presence alone hushed every whisper. As he strolled along, he skimmed his eye over each and every face, catching gazes and holding them. Not everyone looked away, but enough.

His mother relaxed.

Anti-Cosmo forgot that it was a trap. He forgot that he didn't want to be there in that pavilion. He forgot that the whole thing hadn't been his idea in the least. He kept walking, chin tipped back, the muscles around his right eye twitching around his monocle.

He briefly removed it from his face and looked around. Hundreds of millennia spent poring over books had taken their toll, and the blurry faces made him uncomfortable. He replaced it, cleared his throat, and jumped up onto the platform at the end of the hall. He almost fell backwards on his rump.

Anti-Wanda was waiting. Blinking rapidly and licking his lips, even when he knew exactly what it made the onlookers think about him and his true feelings towards the ceremony, he held Anti-Wanda's hands submerged in the offered glass bowl and said all the necessary, binding words.

* * *

Earlier, Cosmo had turned the doorknob with his hand, and the door had clipped shut behind him. It was weird, somehow, to be standing at the back of the house to say his good-byes, and without the sense of touch when he gave his last farewell.

But as sentimental as he wanted to be, he was expected someplace else. Cosmo, swallowing, straightened the tails of his bowtie before flipping his white hood back over his hair.

"I love you, Mama."

And then. He turned. And ran.


	11. (43) Rain Dance

_Summary:_ After a time-travel escapade to dinosaur times, Wanda and Cosmo are scolded and washed down to avoid an outbreak of disease.

 _Characters:_ Wanda, H.P., Sanderson, Cosmo, assorted pixies

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Told You So" / "Not"

 _Prerequisites:_ None; see also, Season 0 Episode 9, "The Really Bad Day!"

* * *

 **43\. Rain Dance** (Pre-series)

 _Year of Breath; Spring of the Pruned Porcupines_

* * *

The square purple lamp sprouting from the square purple desk in the square purple office clicked on with a hazy flicker. "Dm. Wanda Venus Fairywinkle-Cosma."

"Yes, sir."

"Let me repeat this report back to you, just to ensure I have all the facts."

"All right, sir; that sounds reasonable and you can go ahead with that whenever you're ready," she said, hands folded in her gaping sleeves as instructed. Back straight. Chin up. Crown floating. All four dragonfly wings tightly folded between her spine and the fluffy gray robe she had been suited up in, for reasons she hadn't yet asked. The Head Pixie rifled through another stack of papers, then put it down and set his palm to his cheek.

"I am to understand that you and your husband traveled back in time no less than sixty-five million years, allegedly on - I believe these are your sister's words - 'sightseeing tour' - and shrunk all the dinosaurs into itty-bitty birds and lizards. Every one of them. The time-stream has shifted and they are now classified as extinct well before they might have been. The pair of you were the reason for it all along. Ignoring the fact that you've sparked the interest of the Yugopotamians who wish to study and import - slash - export a variety of new species and that this is causing tourism rates to skyrocket, I hope you understand that you and quite possibly the entirety of Fairy World could be sued quintillions for this. I was told there was also a meteorite involved?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why?" he asked without lifting out of monotone.

"I wasn't thinking clearly." It was all Wanda could scrape together. She shifted one palm up towards the opposite elbow. "Hey, it was my assigned day to be bad. It happens, and then- Poof! It all gets to your head. Next thing you know, you're face-down on a trampoline made of grilled cheese in a lagoon filled with hadrosauruses. Or is it hadrosaurusi…?"

"Be that as it may that it was your assigned day, that's no excuse." The thick, perfectly-unsmudged glasses pushed upwards into the graying black hair for the third time in as many minutes as he pinched his nose and rubbed. Then they came off altogether. The Head Pixie set them down without folding the arms. Then, leaning forward, he clasped his hands. "How exactly did the two of you manage to get your hands on a golden Time Key in the first place? Those things are more valuable than honeymoon arrows, and easily six thousand times rarer."

"My sister found it in her cereal box when we were thirty-thousand. We didn't know what it was for."

"Dm. Fairywinkle, now is not the time for games. This is a matter of universal security. I've just come from spending a long morning with Father Time - believe me when I say it was long, because it _literally_ has gone on for a week and I am functioning on very little sleep at the moment - and apparently its magic was so immense that not a single sensor nor tracking device in Fairy World could land a read on it. I find it difficult to believe that the two of you stumbled across it by accident."

Wanda shrugged. The Head Pixie sighed. He made a mark on one of the papers, turned to a second, and replaced his glasses on his round nose. "I interrogated your husband on the matter of what became of the key. Might I hear your side of the story to compare?"

"Okay. So after we'd spent the morning doing our sightseeing thing, we dropped it from a cliff into a lake and went diving after it. Well, if you want the truth-"

"I do."

"-then Cosmo went after it. He… he doesn't mind the water creatures as much as some of us."

"Your hesitation is understandable. The dragonfly is your race's patron and they don't do well around large fish. And did Cosmo manage to retrieve the key?"

Wanda's eyes trailed to the windows. They were square windows, of course, and every one had purple curtains drawn across them. All the lighting in the room was artificial, and the Head Pixie just continued to stare at her from his side of the square, purple desk with his fist leaning against his right cheek. At least he'd put the glasses back on. It made him less intimidating, somehow; she still remembered him with his glasses from when they'd last spoken days long ago, and seeing him without them even for an instant unnerved her. Faltering, she said, "Y-yes, he did eventually. I guarded his back from approaching dinosaurs while he was down there. I'd never realized they had feathers. But there was a problem."

"Please elaborate."

She tapped one fingernail to another inside her sleeves. "Cosmo turned himself into an eel. He thought it would help him blend in with all the other fish. And when he scooped the key up in his mouth, something began to chase him about, trying to eat him, and he panicked. Then he swallowed it."

"Yes, so I've been informed. That's the part that concerns me. Of all fairies, the fact that it was _Cosmo Cosma_ who should…" Leaning back, he rubbed his temples. Rustle. Flip. Flip. "His family tree says that although he is technically a full-blooded fairy, he is legally recognized as half-brownie."

Wanda bristled. "It's a stupid rule. Blatant discrimination against his family for being poor."

"Life is blatant discrimination. You're preaching to the Tuatha Dé Danann, m'dear. It's not my decision to make, and either way, he has the nose." With two fingers, he turned the paper he was reading around so the words were facing her. One graying eyebrow went up. "Though it says here he uses magic to conceal it on an ever-draining basis, still?"

"Are you trying to call me a brownie-kisser?" Even though she was the one to ask the question, Wanda was disinterested in hearing his answer. She'd heard every individual accusation a thousand times before.

The Head Pixie studied her, then scratched his own nose and went back to his notes. "That is not an important piece of this discussion. I bring it up because before sitting him down for questioning, we ran a scan over him as is proper protocol here in Pixie World. Much as with the key, our technology could not pick up any trace of him. Not his shape. Not his magic. Not his lines. Not his core. Until we tested a DNA sample and took his fingerprints, he registered on the screen as a goose egg. He _and_ the Anti-Cosmo."

"Maybe you need new technology."

"We do not. Brownie saliva is highly acidic and evidence suggests that upon his swallowing the key, it dissolved in his stomach and that its abilities passed on to him. Its magic is more powerful than anything Fairy World has ever had to face before."

Suppressing the same shiver she got every time her distrusting senses began tingling and she correctly identified the real villain before the end of a good book, she said, "Sorry- is this the part that's a Pixie matter?"

"Ignoring your sarcasm, I will say simply that actually, it is. Yours and Cosmo's wands have always been covered by the Pixurance plan. However, in light of certain circumstances, I would advise you both to take your business elsewhere. Ta-ta."

"Um." Wanda upturned both palms. "How, exactly?"

"Dm. Fairywinkle. Hands."

They went back into her sleeves. "I'm sorry that I don't know when you last pulled back those purple curtains and looked out the window, but, well… you and your people have kind of driven most everyone else out of the business completely."

He didn't blink or move, with the exception of his mouth. "'Most' everyone is not everyone. I happen to know each and every one of my competitors in the wand and magic line insurance field, along with their strengths and their weaknesses, and when we're done here today, I will provide you with a list of they and their businesses in my personal order of favoritism, if you should like."

This time, Wanda actually did shiver. Even with her father's surname behind her, seeking out those in the struggling businesses (with or without having the expectation that said struggling businesses would be up to par with the bells and whistles offered by the Pixies) was not exactly advisable these days. Shifty characters always found shadows beneath the big names to skulk in.

"It will be in our best interests."

" _Your_ best interests? Whatever happened to 'The customer is always right'?"

The Head Pixie ignored her. "While it is automatic and has always served us well in the past, our system can no longer keep tabs on whatever wishes Cosmo may flit about granting. I might go so far as to say that secret wishes may come out of this, or getting lost without a trace while Fairies scramble to track him down. The world could descend into chaos, and who is going to have to be the one responsible for shelling out the money to restore it to order? We will. It's always us." His fingers tightened, knuckles lining up on top of his spread papers. "If you Fairies would all just calm down and _think basic things through_ instead of zipping off after whichever of the two opportunities laid in front of you looks most appealing at that moment in time, we wouldn't be having this problem, hm? To be frank, the entire civilization on your side of Cherish Jungle needs to chill."

 _You'd think someone as rich as you lot could afford to stay out of other people's business,_ she replied, but only in her head. He shook his and forged on.

"There are proper protocols to follow. You can't very well just spend your life flouncing about breaking Da Rules left and right and expecting to meet no resistance and suffer no punishment. Really, anything could happen with Cosmo's records, location, status, and magic virtually untraceable from this point forward, especially considering who he is. So, this is a grave matter for everyone. If you want my opinion, although I know you will not heed my advice and I accept that, the universe as a whole would be far better off if he were to go dusty tonight."

Wanda regarded him in silence. "If you make any attempt to slice Cosmo open and fish around for whatever might remain of that key, believe me, I will stop at nothing to tear you and your company to the ground. I'm still coming down from my power boost."

"Unfortunately, as much as I desperately want to, I cannot." The Head Pixie's voice still hadn't changed once throughout the entire conversation. As he rearranged his papers into a perfect stack, he went on with a bored, "Your husband has a powerful counterpart on the other side of the Divide, and he and I signed a binding contract that I would not physically harm either one of you. However, I never surrendered my ability to bring you both misery, so I would continue to tread carefully were I the one with your wings."

Then he reached across the desk and took up her wand, which had been placed there by the same pixie who had escorted her in fifteen minutes ago. Wanda stretched her own hand out instinctively, but a sharp reminder not to touch anything made her draw it back. The Head Pixie popped the star cap off the end of her wand and set it beside his cup of highlighters without spilling any of the precious rosewater inside. Then his attention turned to the hollow black handle.

"Ulkroot," he said. "Unusual choice."

"The physical piece may wear faster than the other woods, but I happen to like it for the channeling simplicity and its reliable speed."

"Interesting." He shook it until four coin-shaped, coin-sized, and coin-sounding units of power tumbled onto his desk, along with a clump of wires like a knot of hair. After moving the units about with his fingertip for several seconds, he brought one that glowed with fluorescent green up to his eyes. Wanda watched in twitching silence as he rotated it, smelled it, and even put his tongue to it. Then the Head Pixie nodded and, during a painstaking two minutes, repacked everything into the handle of the wand.

"I've been informed that the Fairy Council has decided to reassign you both training models for the foreseeable future. You can be picking them up from Adelinda von Strangle later this evening, and I was told that you would have time to lock them in your vault before you and Cosmo get shipped off for your five hundred years in Abracatraz."

She swiveled her head to follow him with silent eyes as he got up and floated towards the door of his office. He opened it and motioned for her to follow. Wow. He wasn't even going to thank her for her time?

"And don't touch anything," he reminded her as she slid past him. On foot, of course- with her wings flattened by the robe, she couldn't very well float. Wanda shot him an upwards glare that she hoped he didn't catch. What she really wanted to do was fling the back of her hand against his cheek and see how he reacted to it… but she refrained.

They were back in the room with the water cooler, the white couch, and the secretary desk where one of the pixies lay with his head in the crook of his arm and the crook of his arm in the middle of a thick green book. He sat up at their approach and offered a dull, "Sir?"

The Head Pixie snapped his fingers twice in the direction of a second pixie who hovered stoically by the open door on the other side of the room. "Sanderson, please escort Dm. Fairywinkle-Cosma to the showers."

"The showers?" Wanda found herself asking.

"Yes. Your skin is crawling with prehistoric parasites and deadly bacteria that ought to be extinct and that Fairy World may not have cures for any longer. We've been instructed that we are to have you thoroughly hosed down and vaccinated before we return you to Adelinda."

Wanda glanced down at her hands. Ah.

Sanderson made the same 'Follow me' gesture that his boss had, but before Wanda followed him through the doorway, she turned back. "Drk. Head Pixie?"

"Hm?"

"If you have to make anything about this event public, is there any way possible you could leave out the parts that talk about mine and Cosmo's relationship? Our parents don't know we're married and we'd both prefer it stayed that way."

He furrowed his brow. "I have to document it in Pixie permanent records, but so long as you cooperate, I see no reason why I can't expend some effort ensuring that news of this stays out of the media's grasp."

She supposed it was the best she could hope for, so she surrendered herself to Sanderson's lead. He walked her down flight after flight of stairs ('flight' was such an ironic name), from Floor 18 all the way down to Floor 6 where the pixies had their cute food court and eating area, and spoke to her only once when she made the mistake of reaching towards the handrail for support on behalf of her clumsy feet. Several more of the pointy-hatted weirdos followed them in silence as they descended. Possibly to ensure she didn't slip off while Sanderson was looking the other way.

Part of Wanda desperately wanted to wonder aloud why they were walking all that way instead of _poof_ ing. The other part of her knew the answer; if she was infected, doing anything of the sort was simply the equivalent of laying out a picnic lunch for trouble on a blanket in the woods, then skipping off while all chaos broke loose among the unheeded insects. That, and the pixie would probably be tempted to charge her for it.

"You don't have a separate damsels' washroom," she said without thinking when they pulled up at their destination at last, and then realized why and inwardly kicked herself. She heard Cosmo singing fairy tales-turned-awkward rhymes from behind one of the shower curtains, but her escorts pointed to one of the others before she could ask.

"Soap," Sanderson said, unwrapping a thin bar he'd taken from a high shelf. When Wanda put out her upturned hand, he dropped it into her palm from a safe distance. "Washcloth. Additional washcloth. I would assume you know how to scrub stale magic from your skin?"

"We're doing the whole thing, are we?"

"Yes. You've been contaminated. You must be as sterilized as possible before you may leave quarantine."

Wanda studied the shower, then checked over her shoulder. "Well, is there any way I could get this done in a bathtub instead? I _am_ a fairy. Why do you think I have the dragonfly wings? I don't like them wet if it can be helped." Mostly because she wasn't particularly fond of mulling over the concept of being entrapped in such a large, unfamiliar building without the ability to fly.

The four pixies, all standing near the first toilet stall with arms crossed like huldufólk bouncers at a serious rave, shook their heads. Well then. Pursing her lips, Wanda stepped past the half-drawn curtain. There was a bench in there, and the floor was tiled and grippy. Above the bench she found a hook where the gray robe was almost certainly meant to go. A second one was already awaiting her freshly-cleaned body. Sanderson insisted on turning on the water for her, and once they'd agreed upon the temperature and she'd drawn the curtain shut behind him, she hung her first robe there.

It wasn't a small shower- Wanda could turn full around with her wings spread to either side, and she found herself wondering if the same would be true if they were physically capable of stretching straight backwards, particularly if she reached forward at the same time. The water fell in raindrops. It soaked her pink curls and stung her sensitive wings. Out of spite, she rubbed her palms up and down the curtain, and made a silent show of bracing her bare skin against the walls as she scrubbed her body down.

She started with the physical wash, of course. Red dirt, caked blood, and the like. Once she was relatively satisfied with her work, Wanda rolled her eyes back in her head until she triggered her ability to peer into the magic energy field. Looking again now, she found her skin coated with multiple layers of swimming purple dots. The flakes latched on to each other, released, buzzed about, and then settled again.

Wanda used the soap and water in turns to peel back every one. It was slow going, but she had to admit that she did feel much better when all of it was done. Seeing as her hands were clean, Wanda turned the water off herself and reached for the fresh robe.

The instant she stepped out from behind the curtain, Sanderson pounced on her. Almost literally.

"Not yet, Dm. Fairywinkle. Take off the robe and let's see how you did."

Wanda slid her eyes from him to the other three pixies, still standing relatively where she'd left them. "Uh-huh. Why don't you all turn around first, sport? I'm a happily-married woman, and not really eager or comfortable with the idea of doing that."

"Nonetheless, there are places on your back that are physically impossible for you to reach, and it's our job to wipe them down for you. You can't leave quarantine until you do this. It will be easier on all of us if you please cooperate."

"Or?"

Nobody had an answer for that. After thirty seconds of inquisitive silence, a pixie that Sanderson called Keefe _ping_ ed off to hunt down the Head Pixie. Wanda shrank back against the wall, cursing herself under her breath. Apparently, her situation had just gone from finfolk to redcap.

When the Head Pixie returned, he shot an irritated glance in the direction of Cosmo's curtain (he still hadn't stopped belting out mismatched nursery rhymes) and then turned his half-lidded gaze on Sanderson. "What exactly is the problem?"

Wanda wasn't about to let some pointy-hatted freak answer for her. She folded her arms across her chest. "Well, I'm definitely not going to stand here and be washed down by a bunch of drakes. I can tell you that much. Like I just told these twits, I'm a married woman."

The pixies all turned their heads in the direction of their boss, who sighed like this was something he'd explained more often than the Snobbish alphabet. "Pixies reproduce through parthenogenetic means and don't take mates. You can rest assured that none of them are the slightest bit interested in you."

"I don't care. I have my rights. Call my sister. Call the Anti-Wanda. Call any damsel. Call _Cosmo_."

Cosmo, still humming, poked his head out from under his curtain. "Who's this Cosmo you speak of? He sounds like a swell guy. Someone I should know about?"

The Head Pixie didn't blink. "Witnesses must be present so we can record in our files that you were indeed cleaned. My pixies would still be here, and I'll charge you extra for the inconvenience."

"Cosmo won't like this. I want to talk to him. Let him do it for you. Back me up, sweetie," she added to him under her breath.

"No, seriously, do I know a Cosmo? That name sounds awfully familiar. Does he wear half a pair of glasses and a funny round hat?"

"Would you really like to entrust _Cosmo_ with ridding you of all-encompassing deadly bacteria?"

No. But Wanda outright refused to lift her foot from the matter. Focusing her eyes deep into the Head Pixie's, she said, "I want my husband to be there with me."

The Head Pixie scratched his cheek, but he didn't pick a fight about it. He snapped his fingers twice and motioned for his pixies to head for Cosmo's shower with their washcloths and soap. Gritting her flat teeth, Wanda joined their party. At least the Head Pixie showed no intention of following himself. She heard him _ping_ away, and Sanderson gave a satisfied nod at this turn of events and went after him.

Cosmo had sat himself down cross-legged on the floor, sliding his soap in circles around the drain like some sort of boat, and he flinched slightly when he realized he was about to have an audience. "Rhonda!"

"Cosmo!" He jumped up and the pair embraced as the water pattered down, which caused at least two of the pixies to hiss and stammer that they shouldn't be touching. What did they know- after all, pixies reproduced through parthenogenetic means and didn't take mates, right? They couldn't understand affection.

Wanda's hope was that as long as she was hugging Cosmo, the pixies would be at too much of a loss to bother her. And it worked, for a little while. They fiddled with their black ties and flapped out the wet sleeves of their gray suit coats. But one of them - Wolfram, she'd thought she'd heard earlier - finally snagged her by the loop in the back of her robe collar and reminded her that she needed to take it off.

"You want her to get naked in the shower?" Cosmo asked, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was exactly that. His green hair had been plastered down against his forehead so a great sopping tuft of it hung down between his eyes. "Hey, this is my wife you're trying to rain dance with."

"Yes, and it's my job that's on the line. Why do fairies need each and every side of the coin spelled out for them before they ever do anything?"

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Do you dull gray people really have to be here?" Wanda asked. She hadn't let go.

Keefe put back his head. "Oh my smoof. You look _exactly_ the same in field-sight whether you are naked or clothed. It's not like we're demanding you let us probe around inside your forehead domes. Yet. Why is this a problem?"

Okay. That was the fair point that finally made her shed the robe, even if she still didn't want to. When Wanda flipped back into field-sight herself, she realized that very little of the soap in Cosmo's hand had actually made its way across his skin. So she and two of the pixies went to work on him while the third pixie touched his hand between her fore- and hind wings to ease them down.

Cosmo put a stop to that fast. While his right arm was up in the air getting patiently scrubbed, the other reached out and tugged at the pixie's washcloth. "Hey, buddy. What exactly do you think you're doing with my wife now?"

"I'm trying to do my job and spare all magical beings from gruesomely painful extinction. What did you think you were doing with her when you dragged her off to that utterly filthy and dangerous period of time?"

"Tone back the sass a couple of ticks, Cinna," called one of the others in an identical dull voice. "There's no reason to make this more miserable than it already is for all parties involved."

Cinna muttered something under his breath and pressed his washcloth down again. "Pointy-hatted freaks," Wanda grumbled in Cosmo's ear.

Trickle by trickle, while the shower's rain washed in divets along pale skin, patches of bacteria began to wear away. When one of the pixies whispered some snide comment that Wanda didn't catch, but was possibly intended in her direction by the look he flashed at her over his shades, Cosmo spread both pairs of wings above his head and snapped, "We could take this outside where the light is better."

"Swallow your pride, Wolfram," one of the pixies warned. "His saliva's part brownie. You don't want to fight him."

"You mean that I might want to, but I shouldn't."

"And what's taking so long?" Cosmo asked, seemingly squinting past Wanda's shoulder. "You've been working on her for an awfully long time, and I don't really see anymore why I should have to like it."

The pixie called Keefe hurled his washcloth against the wall. It slid down in a lump. "Then why don't _you_ do it, Captain Capable?"

"Really? Cool!" Cosmo picked up the rag and studied Wanda's back. She could hear the smirk in his voice when he chirped, "Looks clean. All done here. Well done, Cosmo. Ooh, can we go for steak now? I want mine medium rare like diamonds."

"No, _not_ all done. She is covered in fungus. The bacteria are microscopic, but they're present nonetheless. How can you not understand that?"

The cloth touched her, gingerly. "How am I supposed to know when she's clean if I can't see them?"

"Well, and this is just a guess, but you maybe could try turning on your field-sight like your wife."

"Wolfram," Cinna snapped.

Wanda briefly switched hers off again to watch Cosmo's eyes roll back in his head until all that was left were a pair of green holes glowing bright. "Oh," he said, a note of interest creeping into his voice. "So, what color are these back bacteria crawlies anyway?"

Keefe made a lunging move forward, and the other two pixies immediately abandoned their work and slammed him into the wall beneath the showerhead. "Purple," one of them said, wings whirring and splattering wetness, so Cosmo repeated the word and began to touch everything purple in the shower with his soap. With purple being the color of magic in its natural, raw state, this went on for awhile before Wanda directed him gently back towards the task on hand. It was easier after that.

"You're not clean," Wolfram huffed when they'd pulled away to scan the two fairies with a starpiece. He stuffed the wand back into the pocket of his coat. "It would seem we've missed a spot. Where is it?"

"Right here," Wanda said, and lightly smacked the heel of her hand on the space between his eyes. The pixies' reactions were instantaneous. All of them yanked backwards, then targeted the unfortunate Wolfram and scrubbed furiously at his forehead with their washcloths.

"What?" she asked, readjusting the shower curtain to pull it shut in their faces as Cosmo dissolved into giggles beside her. "Can't you serious-faced cone-domes ever take a little joke?"


	12. (6) Out of Character

_Summary:_ The pixies are checking out the Learn-a-Torium before they begin the final phase of their plan, and Betty is stressing out.

 _Characters:_ Gary, Betty, assorted pixies, Longwood, Sanderson

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Solo" / "Fight or Flight?"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **6\. Out of Character** ("School's Out! - The Musical")

 _Year of Leaves; Spring of the Last Berry_

* * *

"What the…?" Gary lay a palm across his mouth and started sprinting up the sidewalk. As he did so, he grabbed for the keychain that always dangled from his belt. It had the most adorable frog-shaped laser pointer/flashlight combination on it. After he fumbled for the giant golden key that opened the Learn-A-Torium's front door, he realized it hadn't been locked at all. He pointed the frog into the blackness beyond.

 _Ribbit ribbit. Ribbit ribbit._

"Hello? Betty? Flappy?" His left hand edged along the wall in search of the switches. "It's, um, it's five-thirty. Well past time to get the morning started. As we all know, we have a big, huge, collassarific day now that summer's starting up again! W-why were all the windows dark? Wasn't Betty supposed to be on opening duty?"

There were no noises. Even when he'd managed to send the lights flickering on one by one up the hallway, Gary hugged his frog near his left cheek and swallowed.

"The d-door was unlocked. Did we forget to close up yesterday?"

He rotated his eyes to the left, then the right. Someone had obviously been in here since they'd all left. A mop lay out in the middle of the floor. An emergency fairy-catching net with a broken handle lay beside it. So did the vacuum and two of those plumed feather dusters on really long sticks for reaching the high corners of the ceiling and across the ball pit. After replacing the frog and keys on his belt, Gary picked all of them up and made his cautious way towards the supply closet. Was Rosencrantz's alligator back for vengeance?

The door to the closet was shut. He moved behind it so he'd have at least momentary protection should somebody jump out at him. Placing his ear to the wood, he listened.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Adjusting his grip on the cleaning supplies, using the vacuum to shield the front of his body, Gary turned the handle. It was stiff. That meant he had to draw the little key from his belt, and after some hesitation, he lowered the mop so he could do so. It clicked in the lock. Stepping behind it, he eased the door open. Not that it helped- something small slammed into the wood, hit the wall, and rebounded onto his blue graduation cap as he peered around the door's edge.

"Sacred smoof-" Dropping a feather duster, he clamped the net down on his head as the thing bounced off and skidded across the front desk.

"Whoa, whoa- No one said you were going to have a net!"

Gary had already plastered himself to the wall and crossed his arms in front of the face. "Take me if you really have to," he shouted, "but do so safely and painlessly!" Then, when he processed the words, he realized he recognized the voice. Gary lowered his hands and sized up the creature on the desk in front of him.

"Um. Is that you, Mr. Bayard?"

The tall pixie (comparatively tall- Gary still wanted to squeeze him like a stuffed animal) made 'Easy, easy there, stranger' motions with his hands. "Put down the net, Gary. It's okay. There's no need for that. Let's all calm down. Lotus position. _Ohm_ …"

Gary let his net clatter to the floor. As he slid the vacuum into the closet, he protested, "What are you doing here? No warning or anything? What if I'd been Flappy? Or Betty? You could've sent her into anxiety. You could've given her a heart attack."

Mr. Bayard wiped a pretend tear from beneath his shades. "What am I doing here? _I_ am messing with you after totally not getting shoved into a locked closet without my starpiece. Eh, the others are further inside this joint checking to be sure all the preparations are in place. You pretty much said it yourself: today's the big day."

"Today?" Gary tried to think back to what he remembered about his end of the plan. "That's the day Betty and I put up advertisements all over the city and Flappy talks with the mayor? Ooh, by any chance, does that mean you brought the…"

Mr. Bayard picked up a familiar bright purple briefcase from behind the desk. When he opened it, a miniature version of Camp Learn-A-Torium, complete with a picket fence made out of super sharp Number 2 pencils, sprang out like a pop-up book. Beyond it, in the top lid, the case was deep violet. Impossibly deep. Gary kept his smile pasted over his cheeks, even as his right eye twitched at one corner.

"Well, isn't that wonderful? I'm so glad you remembered how much I love… travelling… inside the bottomless case when Flappy goes around doing his presentations. If you'll excuse me, I've got to get to the break room and take my claustrophobia pills."

"Hey, before you go anywhere, you've _got_ to see the flyers I made you. I'm in marketing." Mr. Bayard reached inside the briefcase again and pulled one of the papers out. After stuffing it in Gary's hand, he flew around to his shoulder so he could see. "Look, it's yellow because yellow is the color of magic that can only be undone by the caster and lasts after their death, so it's satirical, because we're pretending that this time the thirty-seven-year plan is going to last forever."

"Yes, I… I got that part on my own."

"And it has a clown face on it. You know, because Flappy Bob still likes to dress up and pretend to be a clown. Clowns are nice. Kids love clowns. There's no one they trust more than a clown. That's why there's a clown on it. Look, look, I have a blue flyer too because blue is the 'irritation' color of magic and by this time next week, everyone is going to _hate_ you guys. I'm hilarious. And, I brought you a really dumb clown hat that Tindall made." So saying, Mr. Bayard whipped the creepy hat out from behind his back and slammed it down on Gary's head. The cap was shaped like Flappy Bob's make-up-splashed face. Its brim (Flappy's clowny pink lips) was too short. Possibly because pixies wouldn't find it necessary to use the brim to block the light when they already wore shades everywhere they went. The fabric felt more like cardboard.

"Haha, thanks. You're a regular hoot, Mr. Bayard. Oh, and you have one for Betty too. Um, look at that. Yay. Ooh." He rubbed behind his neck as he stared down at the papers. "See, I hate to be a bother-wother about these, sir, but it's ' _Learnatorium_ ', actually. Without dashes. The 'A' isn't separate."

Mr. Bayard took the two flyers back. "Really? It says 'Learn-A-Torium' out there on your sign."

That made Gary bring his hands together so the thumbs touched and his other six fingers tilted forward and slightly down. "Yeeeesss, but stuff like 'planetarium', 'auditorium', and 'aquarium' is one word. Separating the 'A' in 'Smack-A-Mole' with dashes makes sense. Separating the 'A' in 'Learn-A-Torium' with dashes like it's a word of its own doesn't. You don't 'learn a torium' any more than a Yugopotamian would 'fake a fier'. They're not _verbs_. Betty and I just really like 'Learnatorium' much better, and if we were in charge, and if we could reach the outside sign with our ladder like we can reach the inside sign, that's what it would say. See?"

"I was told it's in chunks so it's not so scary for the kids. Perfect for reading."

"On _paper_ , its official title is 'Camp Learnatorium' without dashes."

That got the pixie's attention. "Is it? Are you sure?"

"Positilutely."

"… Are you really, _really_ sure?"

"Um. Prrretty sure? That's what it says on the wall of Flappy's office." Gary hoped the pixie wouldn't question who had painted it there. He crossed his fingers behind his back. "Why? Do you have the blueprints on hand?"

Mr. Bayard scratched his head. "Okay, it's one word if you say so. But all the flyers have already been run off, and there are hundreds of them, and if you think I'm fixing them then you underestimate my laziness; the lines here are hot and tangled as it is. I put them in your office, so I'd unlock it if I were you. And maybe think up an alibi if Betty asks why you wrote the word with dashes when you feel that strongly about it. Don't tell her it was me."

"Sounds great. Hey, is she here yet? Her bike was outside leaning against the wall, but the lights were off and I got worried."

"Yeah, I think she was reorganizing the toys in the Day Care room. You'd be doing us a huge favor if you could keep her in one place. We're all on edge with the thirty-seven-year plan about to unfold, and _ping_ ing away every time we hear approaching footsteps is beginning to get expensive."

"Wasn't her fault," Gary muttered under his breath.

"What was that?" the pixie asked, snapping the bottomless briefcase shut.

"Nothing, nothing!" He pointed behind off to his left as he backed away, still grinning. "This is me, skipping off in search of my totally fantastic super-platonic surrogate sister of a best friend who or whom I have healthy and acceptable feelings towards and clearly wouldn't sell my limited mundane possessions and all my allies to defend if someone I once trusted with all my heart should turn against us and destroy my entire life and happiness in the mistake of a moment just because we're only two little humans who mean absolutely nothing to the ultra-powerful immortal beings who have commandeered our lives since we were eight for their own selfish purposes before they plan to toss us aside like Kenny when their plan for multi-planed quarter-universal domination inevitably fails by next week! Toodles!" To himself, "'It's not so scary for the kids', my crown. Figurative crown."

As he trotted off down the hall, a crumpled ball of yellow paper bounced off the back of his head and landed in his hand. "I'm sick of always hearing about you and your problems during business hours, Cabrera. There are people who have it worse off than you. Come and talk to me once you've grown up with an addiction for attention after you lose your mother and your house and even your whole neighborhood, and your dad and beloved big brother get abducted by stork people for five hundred years, and you're stuck out in the middle of nowhere with no friends and four insufferable siblings who can't ever agree on the most pointless details, and you can't run away because there's no food for cloudlengths, and the only one who's really there for you is a drunk old man who pays more attention to a stack of bricks than he does to you anyway."

Mr. Longwood slammed a bunch of papers against the wall just in front of Gary and whipped off his shades. "Are you being insubordinate towards the boss again, Bayard? I can and will get you pink-slipped for this."

Mr. Bayard wiggled his fingers. "Ooh, please don't fire me, Woody. I'd hate to be disowned on paper as well as in my head and forced to live with the eel-worshipping amazon babes and explore their jungle's gingerbread caves for the rest of my life."

"Bayard, I _will_ someday find a punishment you don't shrug off!" Mr. Longwood snapped his head around when Gary attempted to slide down the wall past him. The boy froze as the pixie tipped his shades downward. "Look, Cabrera. What happened to Betty on the day of the alligator attack was fully deserved and will not be apologized for. You're already on our red list for that little stunt you tried to pull with Sanderson's starpiece. I don't care about the Finder's Keepers Law or how much magic is boiling under the pre-instar skins of your species: If I had your wings, I'd be thanking my dust flecks that what H.P. had me do to her, I didn't do to you. Your, um… your metaphorical wings. And if you still want to push the blackmail envelope, then I bid you good luck finding another job when magical beings and a soon-to-be-citywide-despised clown are your only references. I'm sure that Kenny would be delighted to have the pleasure of your company in that little business way up there in the sky. Get the picture?"

"Y-yes, Mr. Longwood. I'm so, so sorry, Mr. Longwood. I won't badmouth you guys again."

Mr. Longwood straightened Gary's blue graduation cap, then looked him up and down. "See that you show it," he decided, and turned away. His hands and papers went behind his back as he skimmed forward. "Now, Bayard, about me being insufferable when I was one thousand five hundred, I'll have you know-"

Sighing with a flap of his lips, Gary stuffed the cheery yellow flyer away in his pocket. "How am I going to explain this? She's going to be so disappointed in me. C'mon, Gary. Think, think, think."

He passed several more pixies in the hallway, none of whom greeted him but several of whom seemed to glare inexpressively from behind their shades. Most held clipboards and were looking in and around and under everything. Gary did his best to suppress his shudders. It was almost like this was _their_ workplace, and _he_ was the uninvited one.

Well, technically…

When he finally reached the southern courtyard, Gary took another hall and pushed open the door to the Day Care room, expecting to find Betty with her arms full of alphabet blocks or naptime blankets. Betty wasn't inside. Though, that didn't mean the place was deserted.

"Mr. Sanderson?"

Mr. Sanderson whipped around. The tall mirror behind him vanished with a _ping,_ and something made a distinctive jingling sound. "Gary!"

"What… what are you doing?"

Silence. Mr. Sanderson glanced to his left as though he expected to find the Head Pixie bobbing beside him as usual. When he did not, he turned his head to Gary again. "I'm supervising today, and it's my job to be sure everything's in order. Dimmsdale's, erm, magic lines have been tasting off for a week now. The place is soaked with constant Fairy, like drinking hot water on a stifling day. I don't know what happened here, but something did. Something gargantuan."

"You're supervising?"

"That is correct."

" _You_ are."

"Yes."

Gary pointed behind him with a thumb. "But I passed Mr. Longwood on my way down here, and unless you got super mega-wega promoted, he's still company vice president."

Mr. Sanderson put one hand to Gary's shoulders and nudged him (read: attempted to nudge him with his cute nubbly arms) back into the hallway. The other hand patted his red hair. "You just let the grown-ups worry about that while you run along and play with Betty."

"I came in here looking for her, actually," he said, gripping the frames of the door. "Mr. Bayard thought she might have been in here earlier."

"She was. _Mmph_. Why are you heavy? She gave the place a quick sweep with her eyes and went on her way towards the rear of the building. I haven't seen or heard her return. _Neeihh!_ "

Gary raised one finger. "Does your hat usually have that tiny tinkling star on the end of it like Mr. Longwood's, sir?"

"I'll see you tomorrow, Gary." He _ping_ ed off to some other area of the Learn-A-Torium. Gary, who had been relying on the pixie's limited strength to keep him from falling on his back, fell on his back. Still rubbing his injured funny bone, he picked his way along the hall in the direction Mr. Sanderson had indicated.

It didn't take very long to find her. There weren't a whole lot of rooms in the building – mostly open spaces – and Gary simply followed the trail of visible pixies round and around until he found one corner on the northeast end that they had left alone. It was the corner where their shared, cramped office was. Of course they'd left it, if she was behind only one door that could open without warning at any second (Back in the olden days, he and Betty had slammed a _lot_ of pixies by flinging open doors). When the knob refused to turn, Gary knocked with the back of a knuckle and told her it was him.

"Gary? Oh- oh. What time is it? It's been that long? Oh- geez. Okay. Did you need something?"

"I… didn't. I've just been looking for you. It's almost six. Flappy will be here soon and we need to get ready to make today the greatest day we've had all year long! Are you psyched?"

"Right. R-right. He wants us to post advertisements all over town. Did you make flyers?"

"Yep. And they're in there." He hoped Mr. Bayard hadn't been wrong. He listened for the sound of Betty moving around to check them out, but it didn't come. The door budged slightly beneath his cheek and hand.

"Hey, you don't sound like your happy, peppy self. That seems a bit out of character-wharacter, doesn't it?"

Knowing Betty the way he did, Gary could tell by the soft scraping sound that she had rubbed the heel of her hand around the outside of her eye. " _Gih_. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just need another minute, and I can pull myself together after that. I'm just- just so stressed right now."

"Yeah?"

She must be doing the flapping-one-hand-at-the-eyes thing. Her favorite charm bracelet jingled and clinked. "Th-there's just a lot going on right now. I failed my physics final for spring semester, so now I have to stay after class today to make it up. But I can't leave work in the middle of the day because it's i-illegal to have that few babysitters to so many kids. And I promised Flappy I'd stay late to help you guys because of all the kids we're supposed to be getting after the ads go up, and I c-can't cancel with him. He's already made plans for us to go out there, and it wouldn't be fair to you to have to do it all by yourself. I don't want you to hate me and I can't afford to get f-fired. I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to stop existing. But I don't want to die. I just want to go home, but when I'm not here, I just want to be here so I could be with you, but I don't want to be with you because you just make me feel like an idiot, and usually I love that about you, but I'm just not f-feeling it anymore the way I used to. I-it's weird. And I can't get over this nagging feeling I've had for a month that something really, really important's m-missing from my life nowadays, and I _don't know_ what it is. I feel like I'm going crazy. Why does it have to be this way?"

Gary rubbed his throat, not answering, then let his second hand join the first on the wood. "Betty, nobody could ever-wever hate you. Come out of there so I can hug you with my arms."

"I don't want to be hugged."

"But… but hugging releases bad toxins."

"I accept my toxins the way they are."

He set his jaw. "Elizabeth, let me give you love. There are no frowny-faces at Camp Learn-A-Torium. It's in the code of conduct."

"I would prefer not to, _Garrett_."

But he had a trump card she hadn't counted on. Gary reached for his belt with a jingle of metal. "I know how to cheer you up! Let's sing the 'Guess What I'm Holding' song! _Oh, isn't it grand that it fits in my hand, what could it possibly-wossibly-_ "

"I don't care about your stupid games! Who do you think I am? I'm not two years old!"

He flinched. The doorknob rattled under his fingers as he pulled his hand away. He licked his lips.

"Okay. Right. Um. You can stay in there as long as you need to, okay Betty? If anybody comes in, I'll take care of them myself. I really don't mind at all, and you know I would never say anything bad about you to Flappy, right? If you're still there when it's lunchtime, I'll bring you some nachos from that place you like up the street. Maybe I'll catch you for reading at Circle Time later?"

"Gary, I didn't mean it like that. Gary, straighten your hat and take the tip of your pointer finger out of your mouth. I can only assume that you look r-ridiculous. Um. Er. Hey, so, wh-what was in your hand?"

"Iiiit's my special employee master key!" Brushing at his chest, Gary spun the ring around on his pointer finger. " _Keys, keys, to a whole new world, what might we find in_ -"

"Oh, don't you even dare, Gary. Gary!" The door jerked beneath his hand. "I can hear you sticking that in the lock!"

"I'm not putting it in the lock! I told you that you could stay in there if it would make you happy, and I meant it."

" _Why is everything in here made of safety_?"

"Betty, I haven't touched the doorknob," he said, and she said, "Wait, I have a hard shoe!" He waited on the toes of his scuffed pink and white sneakers, listening, but she didn't speak or move for awhile. After a time, he became aware that the ends of her own fingers stuck out from beneath the door. Gary eased down to his knees and placed his hand on top of them. On any other day, Betty would have withdrawn them. As it happened, she did a startled jerk like she hadn't realized they were wedged under there, and curled her nails beneath her knuckles.

He would not say it. He would resist. He would not, he would not, he would not…

"Hey Betty do you wanna sing the 'Sunny Smile on Your Face' song with me?" he forced out, all in a single breath. One of the pixies at the far end of the hall shot him a _Not today, punk_ type of look and zipped off.

"Normally I can't resist singing, but I'm not really in the mood for it right now."

"Oh, okay." He folded himself around so he was perched more comfortably on his crossed legs. "Do you mind if I stay here with you, on this side of the door, until Flappy shows up and the Learn-A-Torium officially-wishilly open for the day? Or, well, before we head out there to put up all the flyers? I… forgot today was the special day for that."

"I guess not… You really want to be here? Even when I'm in a mood like this?"

He smiled at his knee. "Of course I do. You're my best friend, and I love you. I'm not going to change my mind just because you're having a hard day. Everybody has rough days. Why, do you remember how I totally fell apart the afternoon of the alligator attack? You kept trying to say nice things to me and it only made me cry harder? I don't know if you feel like that right now, but it's the closest memory I have of feeling stressed and afraid for the future, so… Yeah. I want to be here for you."

Betty paused.

Betty paused for a long time.

"I love you too, Gary."

A thud in his heart. In his ears, then. "R-really? Hey, if you're feeling any better, then maybe Friday, would you like to go out with-"

"Nope."

He smiled again and nodded fast, even though she couldn't see him. "All right, cool. Very cool." He played with his frog again. Ribbit. Ribbit.

Betty shifted on the other side of the door. Her fingers drew away. Footsteps. A scooting chair. Shuffling papers. "So, did you make these flyers yourself, Gary?"

"Yeah, I spent all last weekend working on them, and I hope they're good enough."

"They're not bad. I think they're going to be fine. Only…"

His hands went up in surrender before plopping onto his crossed knees again. "I know, I know. I put the dashes in Learn-A-Torium. It just centered better that way, that's all. But do you like them other than that?"

The doorknob rattled. Gary sprang back to his feet in alarm as she pulled it inward, the stack in her hand and one hand to her waist. Betty held them out to him. And when he took them, she leaned over so her pale blonde pigtails swept into her face. The fingers of both hands wrapped around her knees, and her chuckles began to spill out into her typical, braying-donkey type of giggles.

"Aheh heh," he laughed with her, palms sweaty. "Betty? Do you… like them?"

"Well, Gary-Wary, since you _ask-ed-wask-ed_ , I hope you realize that we've known each other for like, more than half of our whole entire big long lives, and you know you totally-wotally went and spelled my name wrong, right?"


	13. (10) Who Am I?

_Summary:_ Foop, afflicted on and off by the Terrific Twos, comes home to make cookies and lemonade with his parents' help.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Wanda, Foop

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Chase" / "Why Me?"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **10\. Who Am I?** ("The Terrible Twosome")

 _Year of Love; Summer of the Frozen Planet (Thawing)_

* * *

Anti-Cosmo had decided not to tell his wife that the world was going to end in fifteen minutes. He flipped to the next channel the instant he processed the rustling wings beyond the stone archway and whirled around. The TV remote he hid behind his back.

"Good evening, Clarice. I mean. My darling fruit-breathed p _rrr_ incess. And it's… fairly early in the morning. Dear me. What are you doing here in the den today, with me, who is your husband?"

She blinked two large, innocent eyes at him. "Whatcha watchin', hon?"

"Um." He checked over his shoulder. "The 'All My Biceps' Season 6 marathon? Oh, drat. I'll just-"

"I wanna see!" she cried, leaping at his shoulders. Anti-Cosmo switched the remote to his left hand and used his right to re-center her balance.

"I-I'll have you know, I did not make a special guest star appearance on Episode 17, no matter what your sister's counterpart says of me. Dear? Dear, sharp toe claws. In my eye. My good eye. Don't scratch the monocle- Blasted high-cholesterol rats, and now I can't see at all. Sweetest, could you please just-?"

Anti-Wanda wasn't listening anymore. Short attention span or respect or call of duty, she'd already sprung back into the air. Plucking up a round red pillow with her clawed foot, she scratched her head. "Ah thought I heard Foop cryin' 'round here someplace."

"C _rrr_ ying? How simply absurd! We ought to take you in to have your poor unpointed ears checked again. Foop does not cry, dearest."

A sniffling wail splintered the air. Anti-Wanda bolted through the far doorway. As his fur bristled up with alarmed static, Anti-Cosmo grabbed his monocle from where it dangled on its cord and swept after her. He ran straight into her back when she pulled up, knocking both of them to the ground.

"Heaven a' bestie ef efs friends foreverers."

Foop stood there on the marble dining room floor in front of the ever-roaring fireplace, dressed in the fluffiest parka Anti-Cosmo had seen since he was perhaps twenty thousand years old- more purple than his enormous, reddening eyes. His body sagged forward, and his left hand snuck across his body to prick its talons in his right elbow.

Mother and father exchanged glances as they pulled themselves back into the air. Anti-Wanda's big-toe-scratching-at-cheek glance said, _May I, sweetie, or wouldya like ta have the opportunity for soothin' the poor thang first?_ Anti-Cosmo's shoulders-jerked-up-to-ears glance said, _What above Earth is this creepy little blue sponge thing that has replaced my independent rebellious child he is better than this please get rid of it and set out a bowl of cream and lock the door it has no place here in my castle this was not in my plan I did not sign up for this._

Fortunately, dim as she could be at times, Anti-Wanda took her cue. She took the awkward baby in her feet and flipped him into the air. He landed in her hug. "Foop?"

His square face lit like Fairy World's Big Wand. "Mother!" His arms went around her neck, and his lips pressed against her cheek. "I love you just as much as I love a few of my other favorite things, such as gumdrops and colorful sugar sprinkles. I know it sounds strange, but sometimes I love you even more than them too!" Then he jerked back, spitting, and attempted to shove his way from her grip. He pushed so hard that he swung down like the ticking pendulum of a grandfather clock, and all of a sudden he was dangling by one foot from Anti-Wanda's hand. "By the name of some important person I was probably supposed to be paying attention to in school, _why must I suffer this way_?"

Anti-Cosmo dropped to the floor specifically so he could take a step back. He lifted one claw. "What… what is wrong with him? Is he fighting with Hiccup for dominance again? Oh, bother it all. I thought we'd finally shaken the goody-two-shoed b _rrr_ at."

"Hmm…" Anti-Wanda rubbed her chin. Then she licked his cheek just below his ear, slowly. Eiyeh.

"Gasping sounds! Egads, Mother! Your tongue scrapes across my skin like sandpaper, and your breath smells about the same. It's rather pleasant, actually. Like a brisk autumn stroll through the quiet woodlands."

Beaming, Anti-Wanda faced her twitching husband again. "Aha, I thought so's. Our li'l pup's growin' up on us so big'n quick, and he's gone and caught his Terrific Twos off his counterface guy. Ah guess their bodies is still agin' all funny after that whole time-frozened business."

"The… 'Terrific Twos'?"

"'Course!" She nuzzled Foop with her nose, and he nuzzled back with a coo. "Why, you may-a' been the last a' the anti-fairy babies, hon, but there's other types a' Anti-Fairy underspecies than us, and with all that readin' ya do, Ah'm sure ya gotta know what the Terrific Twos is, don't ya?"

" _Pfft_. Well, obviously I would. Who is High Count around these parts? The High Count knows these things." While Foop intermittently tried to injure and salvage his mother's feelings, he slipped his pocket watch into his hand. Thirteen minutes until Earth would freeze in a solid ice brick. And still no word from Cosmo. Idiotic buffoon- Could he not comprehend how his counterpart fretted about him and his family when destruction was raging like this? He'd planned a potluck on Thursday and tonight would be a rather inconvenient time to perish. Even if it did get him out of choking down Anti-Blonda's undead shrew soup.

Fairy-Cosmo and Fairy-Wanda could _not_ be allowed to die. Baby Poof neither, probably. Oh, if only he could be allowed to _foop_ off to Dimmsdale and check up on them. But unless he, miles above the Earth in Anti-Fairy World, happened to pass directly above some sort of bad-luck trigger when it occurred below, he and all his influence were as good as imprisoned here behind the Barrier until something huge rolled around, like Friday the 13th, the annual Bake-Off of the Angels, a willful wish summoning, the Big Wand draining of power, or the Fairy World Games (Anti-Fairies had scored the most golds two years running- poor, scrawny Pixies had yet to ever manage one).

Oh, he'd attempted escape, of course. Always. And he'd even gotten a fair amount of his people out on multiple occasions. By the nature of its existence, there was always at least one chink to be found along the big green Barrier, and one simply had to track it down and chip away until it burst. That was why he couldn't stop. He could never stop, because it was always there. 574,481 years of imprisonment for Anti-Fairykind, and it was always there. Always obtainable. It was the game of avoiding recapture that never went on for long. Foop alone was allowed free travel as he pleased, and that was purely because Jorgen had decided it was less effort to round him up when he decided to slip away to Earth and cause trouble than it was to lower the Barrier for him every day so he might attend his Fairy school. A Fairy school, like his old man!

That, and less risky, too- Anti-Fairies did have a tendency to swarm the entrance portal on those days when Jorgen actually had come to escort Foop through. Not their smartest course of action, perhaps, but lying in wait for opportunity to knock and then tackling it before it got away was just their style.

It simply wasn't fair. It wasn't as though any of them had asked to be born Anti-Fairies. There was nothing to be done about their instincts.

Foop tugged on his sleeve with both hands, startling Anti-Cosmo out of his thoughts. His son was practically shivering in anticipation, tiny fingers closed around a far larger wrist. "Father, you're a fabulous baker who always works hard when the Bake-Off rolls around each year, are you not? May we please bake a plate of heart-shaped sugar cookies for Auntie Wanda? She's having a bad day because Poof wants to block out the Sun."

Hence the whole rubbish on TV about Earth entering a new Ice Age. Anti-Wanda clasped her hands near her cheek.

"Aw, I think that sounds like the swellest little cutesie idea you could a' pulled out a' your mouth. Why, shore! We'll need these things." One wave of her wand later, she had summoned up a swollen cookbook. It flattened the small anti-fairy to the floor.

"Startled squeals of agony!"

As Foop shrugged the heavy book away, Anti-Cosmo rapped him lightly on his thick skull with the butt of his wand. "Perish the nicey-nice thought. Our kind do _not_ bake goodies for Fairies without first planning out some dastardly trick to follow it."

Foop rubbed the faint dent in his head and grimaced. "How revolting. Whyever should I want to bake goodies for them?"

"You _just_ said-" Anti-Cosmo stuck his wand horizontally between his fangs and bit down. "Can you not go two seconds without contradicting yourself, pip? Perhaps Hiccup has been chewing up your memories again."

Offended, Foop beat his way back into the air. "It isn't my fault, Father. My stupid purple creampuff of a nemesis, Poof, is undergoing a vicious struggle of good versus evil of his own right now, and I ought to be getting back there to support him with a pacifier and his favorite yum-yums before I help him return to being his sweet-hearted self, and he and I can be the best of friends, and go on play-dates and to the movies together. I have tickets to the Lau Rell Carnival."

Anti-Cosmo took the baby in both hands and held him away from his body. "I don't know which f _rrr_ ightens me more: Foop going goody-goody, or the Earth- the Earth- the, uh, earth-shattering beauty that is Anti-Wanda, the love of my life." Twelve minutes.

"Aw, you mean it, sweetygums?"

"Cottonclaws, have I ever lied to you?"

"'Sweetygums'?" Foop repeated, struggling to loosen his father's grip on his awkward square body. "'Cottonclaws'? _Uihl_. Perhaps I'm better off going nice after all. It gets me closer to putting myself out of my own horrid misery."

Anti-Wanda massaged his flat head in just the right spot to make him purr. "It's the Terrific Twosies, babybuns. All Anti-Fairies gotta push through it. Now, let's getcha and your daddy all aproned up for bakin' stuffs."

Anti-Cosmo flinched. "Terribly sorry. What was that now?"

"Ya're gonna be helpin' us, a' course. Ah mean, sure you are, ain't ya, pum'kin?"

Foop's pupils expanded. He held both hands in front of his chin, fingers drooping. His lower lip quivered. "Prettiest pleases, Papa? I don't spend a lot of time with you unless you're scolding me for some nasty trick I pulled and therefore probably deserve my punishment, and I do ever so much wish to engage in the act of mashing up balls of dough and aligning them in neat and perfect rows before we roast the bad feelings out of them in the oven of delightfulness. Yay!" Blink. Blink. Hands to the ears, yanking the sharp tips downwards, "Someone, cause the end of my existence! I _deserve_ it!"

Eleven minutes and fifteen seconds.

"Have fun with your mother, Foop. She knows her way around the kitchen better than I do anyhow. I have things of my own I must attend to. Namely, my scrying bowl."

Anti-Wanda leaned forward, hugging Foop to her chest. " _C'mon_ , honeyfangs."

"Anti-Wanda, that- that's _cheat_ ing." And even as he swallowed and whimpered and twisted his fingers back and forth, deep down he couldn't help but love it.

"Just take a break from all yer hard-workin's and yer plannyness ta bond some with yer this here son," she urged, leaning closer a little more.

She never called him 'honeyfangs' unless she really, really wanted something. Not a lot of people could handle holding that kind of power, particularly when they paired it with a quivering lip and a dark curl of hair falling into a soft, pretty face, and she didn't like exploiting it because she knew it made him squirm his big toe into the marble floor. The monocle would come off in his hand, and he'd rub it rapidly against his cravat as he glanced over his shoulder. And then when he looked back, he'd see the batting lashes even with his vision blurry. Deep, deep sincere pink eyes. Anti-Cosmo stared at her through half-lidded eyes himself, his arms folded but fingers twitching, definitely _not_ plucking out his monocle, _not_ checking behind him, then allowed one corner of his mouth to answer Foop.

"Fine. If your 'Terrific Two' instincts are _rrr_ eally terribly ripping you apart in there, you can make the dratted sugar cookies. But I shall be supervising to ensure you do not give into that stupid attack-my-counterpart-on-sight instinct of yours, child."

"Thank ya, honeyfangs."

He lowered her lips with his forefinger before they could connect. "Not in front of Foop, kittenbreath. Later. There's a time and a place."

"I've changed my mind," Foop decided as he held his ears flat to the sides of his head. "I'm summoning Hiccup and I'll let him stay out. I'll find a way somehow. Just let it all come to smoke."

Anti-Cosmo teleported them all into the sleek black and red kitchen with the tiniest swirl of his wand. They had hardly touched down before Anti-Wanda used hers to _foop_ up some ridiculous-looking aprons. Foop's read 'Cook' across the pocket. His read 'Nachos' with the 'n' and 's' pointed backwards. Fine.

"Now," he said, lifting his wand again, " _Rrr_ ule number one is that if these cookies are going to Fairy-Cosmo and his family, there is to be no poison nor dynamite nor glass shards nor tomfoolery nor trickery of any kind."

"That makes for a waste of ingredients," grumbled Foop, rubbing his eyes. "Why are we going to do that? Ow!"

"So we don't kill off our hosts, you half-wit twit! Would you very much like to go up in a column of smoke and cease to exist entirely?"

"Why does it always have to be _my_ fault that Poof spotted my lifesmoke on my way to absorb his big fat core while everyone around him was screaming in alarm and it threw all his thoughts into full-on 'Kill that terrifying thing, whatever it is' mode?"

Anti-Cosmo crossed his arms. "You were fully capable of dodging around him until you sensed him thinking something else, you bumbling swampsnort. You were at _least_ a minute and a half old. I'd _rrr_ eally have expected any offspring of mine to know better than to keep charging."

"'I'd really have expected my offspring to know better'," Foop muttered in falsetto. "Father, at the speed I was moving, I was lucky I didn't hurt poor Baby Poof when I so terribly forced myself upon him in that cruel way I did. I didn't even RSVP. I know! I'll write him an apology letter right now! I have the most adorable pink stationery I've been dying to use for years. Er, months. It has a fluffy poodle on it, see? I love glitterpens! They're sparkly on my tongue."

He got a cuff over one corner for that. The pad of paper and the stolen purple pen on its chain disappeared with a pop.

"Boys!" Anti-Wanda slammed a bag of flour down on the table. "Y'all need ta learn ta play nicer more, h'yuck."

Still rubbing his sore corner, Foop protested, "But we're Anti-Fairies! They're our mortal enemies! Why are we even baking cookies to begin with?"

The High Count found himself upturning his palms again. "Because _you_ wanted to, you infuriating little boob. Can't you even remember what you said and keep your thoughts straight?" One hand slid to his face as, bracing his elbow against the ebony-black counter, he summoned a dark mixing bowl into existence.

Foop's eyes rolled around several times. "Oh, right. I seem to remember feeling a strong desire to participate in that revolting sort of thing. I'll bet they'll taste delicious, though. Sweeter than a spoonful of honey dipped through a river of whipped-cream and purified by a unicorn horn." And he hugged himself before _foop_ ing up a donut.

Ten minutes.

"Now, Foop." Anti-Cosmo turned his wand horizontal again, teeth straining against one another. "You're a smart young chap who surely pays attention in school like a good, intelligent drake. What must magical c _rrr_ eatures such as ourselves always keep in mind when it comes to food, hm?"

"Ooh, ooh!" Foop fluttered up and down in place, slinging his blue hand back and forth through the air. "Pick me, Father, pick me! I know it! I know!"

"Yes, the silly little pup in the purple parka and the black apron floating in the f _rrr_ ont row."

"Magic is not a very filling substance to eat, it tastes like the smoke of our ancestors who died to provide us with our powers, and magicking up food and eating it is just doubly wasteful and disrespectful to them."

"Correct." Anti-Cosmo patted his head, prompting the little anti-fairy to purr again. "Now, who knows why teleporting food doesn't count as magic-touching it? Anybody here?"

Foop's hand shot up again- so quickly that he shot up with it halfway to the ceiling. Anti-Cosmo tapped a claw to his chin and pretended to think for a long time before he gestured with the tip of his wand towards the gasping Anti-Wanda.

"Aw, so like, it's 'cuz teleportation stuff an' flyin' 'round uses pink magic just like mah eyes, and different from th'other kinds, pink magic always comes from inside a' us 'stead a' from our counterhost's core bubbles, and so it just don't count the same way. Pink magic durn't leave dust or smoke when you're done playin' with it."

"What?" Foop clutched his hands to his chest as his violet eyes filled with hurt. "Why would you ask Mother that when I had the answer?"

"Why, Foop, you had your turn already, silly bean. And which of you knows why I'm going to ask you both to bring me all the baking ingredients out from the pantry rather than _anti-poof_ ing them out myself?"

Both of the anti-fairies flapped their wings more fiercely and strained their arms and their voices for his attention. Smirking softly, Anti-Cosmo leaned back in the air as they fought it out.

"Whichever wand does the magic has to cough up the dough to pay for it. Like my scrumptious sugar cookie dough that I'm going to be baking for Auntie Wanda!"

Anti-Wanda blinked. "My name's Anti-Wanda."

"Co _rrr_ ect yet again, pip."

His wife snapped her fingers. "Aw, shoot. Ah thought it was 'cuz the Fairy-Cosmo's got his weird broken mutant thing and if he don't get his nursing milk wit' e'ery meal a' his, he can't use his magic and then you can't pull it through y'all's matching cores."

The eye behind his monocle twitched. "No, sweetest, that's not why. Foop, b _rrr_ ing me an egg and the ½ measuring cups and teaspoons. I'll get the sugar myself- I don't trust either of you to resist burying your faces in it. You can find a spatula for me, dearest. Unless, of course, you've devoured all of them. Tally ho, Anti-Fairywinkles!"

Out came the butter, the cream, the baking soda, the vanilla, the powdered sugar, and the almond extract. Anti-Cosmo snatched the tray from Anti-Wanda and slammed it down on the counter. He lifted his wand. "All right, now all we do is take some of this, a bit of this, throw in a pinch of cream-"

"Can I do some? Please, father, please?"

"Er…"

Seven minutes. If Foop knew where his 'uncle' and 'auntie' were, Anti-Cosmo had to get him out there fast to watch their backs. He hovered by the oven, biting the tips of his claws and glancing between his wife and child and the pocket watch in his hand.

Six minutes.

Five minutes.

"All right, very good, the both of you. Give me that. I say, this is good stuff. Yes, and now we spin it around real fast for about ten seconds, manipulate it with pink magic to split it into balls, and here we go."

Foop cheered as wet dough chunks rained down on the tray. If he was punching the air with excitement or flapping his hands or something, Anti-Cosmo didn't notice. Levitating twenty-four balls of multiple mixed-up ingredients all at the same time was exhausting. It wasn't as though between himself and Cosmo Prime, he'd gotten the lion's share of magic.

"All done," he said, releasing his wand so that it floated in the air beside him (Thank you, pumice). "Now, all there is left to do is simply shove it in the oven, and p _rrr_ esto! Better let me handle this part, dear."

"Aw, but Ah like gettin' all the steam blown in mah face."

"Why can't we bake them with warm magic?" Foop asked as he groped for the cookie tray, like they didn't teach the basics of Anti-Fairy powers in his Fairy school. "I want to fry these insulting things to cinders at a million degrees and stomp their crumbs into the dirt."

"Is that your attempt at some sick joke while you're in this do-goody state, child? You have to put confectioneries such as these on 375 degrees before anything at all useful happens to them. Anti-Fairy magic cannot _rrr_ oast above boiling temperature any more than Fairy magic can freeze below 32." Definitely _not_ a million degrees. You would fry the magic out of it. Who was raising this kid?

"Ooh, like the planet is about to freeze while Poof continues to block the Sun! Which reminds me, I've already made reservations to go skating once the world becomes a beautiful frozen wasteland of wintery fun and cheer. Hoorah for coupons and online discounts!"

"The huh?" Anti-Wanda asked.

"It's nothing, darling." When Anti-Cosmo next turned around, he found that Foop lay on his stomach across the shiny counter, his tiny arms wrapped as tightly around his square head as they could go. Shattered eggshells, spilled flour, and bottles of pink food coloring and sugar sprinkles spread around him, fluttering further away with every panicked flap of his leathery wings.

"I don't know what I'm _saying_ anymore! I'm not in control of my own tongue!"

"Aw, baby." After setting down the lemonade pitcher she'd just drawn from the fridge, Anti-Wanda flew to his side. Plucking him up, she settled herself upside-down from one of the thin rafters.

"I'll be a laughingstock," he whimpered, burying his blue face in the soft pudge of her belly. "Father's armies will never respect me again. I'll lose my heirship to the High Count seat, my dignity, Anti-Marigold's sarcastic and sometimes revolting if very much appreciated affections- everything."

Three minutes. Still shifting his gaze between them and the dough blobs inside the oven, Anti-Cosmo made a rolling motion with his hand.

"Everybody's got silly bits a' their babyhood, hon. In fact, everybody's got silliness their whole lives. Ain't nobody who hasn't never felt embarrashamed afore. Why, only yesterday Ah near burned the castle down when I tried fittin' one of them delicious throw pillows in the toaster."

"Mother, you attempt that every morning."

"Yes," Anti-Cosmo agreed dryly, "he's spot-on. You _rrr_ eally should know better than this."

"See what I mean? I got the sillies too." Anti-Wanda hugged Foop to her chest, even when his pointy corners bit into her skin. "No matter how many mistakes ya make, no matter how many people point an' laugh and never let ya live yourself down, you'll always be mah evil wittle baby."

"I don't need your stifling affections, Mother!" he snapped, kicking and wriggling. "I am independent! Like a beautiful snowflake spinning around in the sky."

"I know, sugarkiss. You got egg in your hair. When ya get back, let's wash y'off in the tub. Maybe Ah can actu'lly get you ta take one now, huh?"

He lit up. "Can we make it a bubblebath? With a rubber duckie and foam letters that stick to the wall?"

Two minutes. His fingers twitched.

"All right, these are baked enough. Yes, yes, come on down from there, you two, yes, very good. Toss me the least-chewed of those hot pads behind you, Anti-Wanda."

"They're done already?" Foop asked, a note of suspicion chasing off his sickening sweetness yet again as he burned his apron to ashes with a shake of his bottle.

"We own a magical oven, obviously."

"But it was my understanding that-"

Anti-Cosmo placed his palms behind Foop's back and pushed him towards his mother, who had a plate just ready to be layered with cookies. A wonder she'd managed to find one that didn't have an enormous bite taken out of the left side. "Now, let's get you off with those to your Fairy-Cosmo and Fairy-Wanda."

"I was going to bring some of Mother's infamous super-salt lemonade-"

"Ah a'ready got it for ya in a big fat pitcher right here, babycake. It's e'en got ice!"

"Yes, get on with you. Get on now."

"Thank you, Mother. This will be a simply delightful treat for them on this unfortunate day. Be back soon, straight after I deliver these to Auntie and Uncle. Ta-ta!" With a second rattle of his bottle, the rosewater inside sloshing, he vanished in a cold shower of pink embers.

Anti-Cosmo leaned his hands and chest against the counter and released a long sigh through his fangs. "I do ever so much hope they'll all be okay."

"Aw, they's gonna be purty fine," Anti-Wanda insisted, wrapping her arms around his neck. She kissed his ear. "Thank ya for helpin' us with all a' that, even though ya din't really wanna. I think we got done much faster with ya supervisin' the whole processing."

He intertwined his fingers with hers and sighed. "I also hope he comes back soon. I loathe the not-knowing while he's out."

"Well, 'loathe' sounds like 'love' and ya love me, so you got that ta be happy about. H'yuck."

"Well, yes. Come on- Toss me my wand and we'll get this kitchen spic and span before our little angel gets back, pip pip."

After taking a bite out of a stick of butter and the knife, she nodded and did as he requested.

"This is rather nice though," he admitted as she shut the door to the pantry. He bobbed beside her, snaking his arm around her waist. "Isn't it? For once, he was actually paying us some degree of proper _rrr_ espect. It's like we're actually a family. How long do the Terrific Twos last again?"

"I'd say 'bout eleven more hours, guessin' from how much he was shiftin'. Later his relapses is gonna all get fewer and the goodness'll be settin' in."

"Did your 'Twos' ever end, dearest?"

Anti-Wanda tried to remember if they had. "Well, a'course. It's only s'posed to last twelve hours, so… I'm older than that."

He brought his free hand around in front and squeezed hers. "I know."

"Aw," Foop cooed as he went in for the kiss. Anti-Cosmo choked on air, whirling about and brushing frantically at his cravat.

"Oh- oh, look at you. You're back already. That was quick. Ahem. Yes, well. How went your sickening little peace offering? Did they very much enjoy the cookies?"

Foop shrugged. "Sadly, my cookies had an accident, and no one had the opportunity to try any of them. But Poof decided not to block the Sun anymore! Earth is going to thaw into a summery paradise of shining flowers, which is one of my most favorite things. Later, can we go swimming in the Bahamas? I've never gone swimming in something other than the acid pits before."

"And your Auntie and Uncle? How are they?"

"All home with adorable Poof and sweet Timmy Turner again, snuggly bugs with rugs." Unclasping his hands from near his cheek, he stretched his arms up for a hug. "May I pretty please have that bubble bath now, Mother? And then I want to bring Great Uncle H.P. a bunch of shiny office supplies I found in one of the old storerooms ages ago and mix up a huge fresh batch of Mother's best wand-cleaner for Uncle Jorgen too! Yay!"

Anti-Cosmo adjusted his monocle. "Well, seeing as our c _rrr_ isis has been averted and I am no longer needed here, I shall retire to my chambers. I do not wish to be disturbed."

As Anti-Wanda scooped Foop into her arms, she tickled his chin and said, "Ah think I 'member when your silly daddy had his Terrific Twos. Ah was barely fourteen thousand…"

He stopped at the door, clutching the frame as a grimace oozed across his face. "Dearest, this isn't _that_ story, is it? That's what it was? I had the- No, not in front of Foop…"

"Oh, please tell the story, Mother!"

She giggled and booped their son on his snubby round nose. "Well, your daddy was the youngest of all th'anti-fairies. They say that Fairy-Cosmo was one a' the worst babies ever ta go through the Terrible Twos, and a' course, your daddy was one a' the nicey-nicest ta go down in the history books on our side a' the Divide. He rescued the city of Atlanticus from bein' stuck underwater-"

"I didn't do any such thing! She- she- she doesn't remember right!"

"He's right. Ah left out the part 'bout how he rescued it eight times."

Anti-Cosmo drew his claws down his cheeks. "No, no- please!"

"He paid e'erybody's soup'n sandwiches forward, he cleaned up the whole place where the weird ol' green anti-fairy lived, he donated all his old books and taught the other pups who din't get ta go to the Fairy Spellementary School like him how ta do readin', he bought all the lemonade from mah and mah sissy's lemmyade stand-"

"That was some other Anti-Cosmo. It _is_ a pretty common name."

"And of course, we can't forget 'bout how he swore his bindin' oath that he would never, ever, no matter what happened, _ever_ let anythin' happen to any a' the adorable li'l-"

As they headed off down one of the halls, Anti-Cosmo zipped after her, hands clasped and eyes wide. "No, Anti-Wanda, please! Don't tell him that part. Darling, you _prom_ ised. Come on, cottonclaws! Cinnamon dumpling! Unlucky charm! Lambcake! Cherrystem! Dimpledip! Larkadoodle! Kittenbreath! Please, my dignity- that's not fair! Anti-Wanda, _come back_!"

* * *

 **Update** \- In this Prompt, Anti-Cosmo mentions the Barrier being up. Further worldbuilding has revealed to me that it went down after Power Hour, and would therefore be down in this Prompt. Anti-Cosmo also refers to Foop's alternate personality, Hiccup, as "a goody-two-shoed brat." which conflicts with later (chronologically earlier) information in the Prompt "Not All the Same". Go forth with this new knowledge while I think up ways to correct him here. Or I guess I could leave things as they are and trust you to just roll with it.


	14. (44) Bones

_Summary:_ Vicky and Mark have very different opinions on what to do with a dead dog.

 _Characters:_ Mark, Vicky, Doidle (deceased), Timmy, Sparky, Tootie, Chloe

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Naptime" / "I'm Home"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **44\. Bones** (Post Season 10)

 _Year of Soil; Spring of the Tumbling Stones_

* * *

Three such exsquidsitely-dressed Earthling humans (in addition to one dappled green, tentacled alien boy and one overweight dog of the yellowish and bronze variety) had probably never set foot in the dump before, let alone sat on such beautifully-sculpted heaps of trash. The table was Mark's personal favorite, since it had taken quite a bit of molding and mashing to ensure that it stood up in a straight way without the hovering technology that he was so used to. But no matter how he tried to hint at this, Timmy Turner did not appear to be picking up on the clues that he was pining for praise. Whatev, it was cool.

The little human dude was decked out in a white suit at least two sizes too small for his fourteen-year-old form, and that unnervingly hideous Chloe Car of Michael girl was wearing the matching top hat. They had brought their floating friends too, disguised as though with Fakeifiers in the forms of a pink bowtie, a green flower, and a purple bracelet, though at age ten Timmy had made Mark promise not to let on to Vicky that they existed. Proudly to say of Mark, that he had never once ever considered breaking that trust.

Speaking of Vicky… Oh, dear Vicky…

Mark, long since dragged into full-on Yugopotamian form by Vicky's warm tears and his own soft heart, had been holding onto her small and frag-ee-ile hand for what had to be going on twenty minutes now. It was not in any way looking well for his wrist. Maybe a quarter of an Earth hour ago, the red blisters had stopped bubbling and begun to steam. Mark had gnawed through most of his tie and was considering whether his jacket or the collar of his white shirt would taste better, but he could not simply be doing the releasing of Vicky. Not so long as she remained in this sort of trance-like state. Her grip crushed his tentacle.

Chloe Car of Michael held Vicky's other small hand in her even smaller Earth girl hand, although she was clearly reluctant to touch his horrifyingly beautiful girlfriend in his presence. As for Timmy Turner, he had sprawled himself across the trash lawn chair with Sparky curled up on his stomachal region. The yellow dog had not yet barked a single word of spoken langooage, even though Mark knew from his shimmering crown and tiny wings that he had floaty blood in him and was fullifyingly capable of it. He had heard Timmy Turner mention to Chloe Car of Michael, too, that the dog known as Sparky Stealer of Souls had not eaten any of his speci-al dog food for the previous two days. So that was a thing. Tootie Little Sister perched on the arm beside him. She waved a dog biscuit, but the effort was half-hearted. Sparky Stealer of Souls did not attempt to be going for it.

If this kept up much longer, then the alien warrior prince known to Earth as Mark Chang would be short a few suction cups. The metaphorical line had to be drawn upon the ground somewhere.

Mark cleared his throat and tapped Vicky's shoulder with the end of a different tentacle. "So, uh. Sh'yeah, are we good here yet, Vick-ay?"

She did not answer to him. He stood to her left, but she gripped his tentacle with her right hand, the arm held across her body. She used that shoulder to rub wet sparks from her cheek. Mark shot a helpless glance in the way of Chloe Car of Michael. She then elected to pass that look onto Timmy Turner. He shrugged back _, Hate her and d_ _o not wish to get involved here, sorry._

"I just really don't want to accept that he's gone…"

That was his Vicky's voice. Mark shifted his attention back to her. He had never, ever seen Vicky cry before, and even now she was doing a good job of pretending she was not engaged in such a curious human expression of emotion. No flushed face, no squeaking her words, and no sobbing. Just an exhausted sort of quiet. She pinched the bridge of her nose and began to massage her eyebrows.

"Stupid… twerp of a pooch. I'm really going to miss him. I know it's ridiculous, but I… I really feel like I had him for fifty years or something."

Timmy Turner coughed into the part of his shirt material that was known as a lapel. Mark lifted another tentacle. "I am sure, Vick-ay, that the Doidling dog misses you too, wherever his spirit has flown off to-o."

Chloe Car of Michael glared at him. He had selected and pronounced the wrong answer, evidently. Hey, maybe she had better be seeing how _she_ would do if she were to have one of her favorite arms dissolving before her eyes. Mark tugged again on his limb, with little success. Okay, zero percent success.

To be perfectly honest, after having his tentacle squeezed this long, Mark wanted to cry himself. And on Yugopotamia, the shedding of the tears except in the cases of certain incidents was likely to get you fed to the hideous plant monster Jer-ah-may. In fact, the only time that Mark had ever cried in his entire alien life was that long night following the day he had like, so rude-i-ly been abducted from Earth by his parents, crowned king of his home planet, been forcibly wed to the Bodacian princess Mandie, gotten backstabbed by aforementioned Mandie and locked up in the very topmost part of the appropriately-named Pinpoint Tower with Timmy Turner, raced back to Earth, nearly had the ink beaten out of him by the again and for the third time aforementioned Mandie, had finally been reunited with his beloved redheaded demon… gone in for their first kiss with the affection sparking so horribly that his Fakeifier shorted out and killed his human disguise in his hands…

And she had taken his cheeks and looked him in the eyes, the disgust curling over her face, and dropped his tentacles. Just walked away. On the night they were finally going to that fancy Chinese restaurant that she appeared to adore. Like all the other dates they had attended together as a pair of two meant nothing at all.

No. As much as she so obviously held affection towards him, she would never forgive him for his alien blood. It was the thing they fought about most often. Still, he had never given up hope. After all, she had hand-delivered him a box of chocolates for the Day of Valentine Hearts. They were chocolates that had a death threat attached to them and were death-a-ly poisonous to him and to the rest of his alien kind, but she did not know that and could be forgiven. Even when he had begged her and pleaded with her for months (it felt like years at times) to have a second chance, she had demanded answers as to how an "awkward foreign exchange twerp from the Earth location known as Europe" could possibly "fit in that tall and hunky Justin Jake Ashton" costume, or something something.

He had told her the truth. Bad move to do it before she headed off for another one of her long eve-i-nings where she engaged in the babysitting of Timmy Turner, maybe, and he still wondered sometimes how that had all gone downwards. She had seemed fairly furious.

But she loved him. That much was obvious in the way that she had come back to him after he had put forth the effort into shimmying down from her roof and knocked on her window for a couple of hours or days. She had been ever so really interested in something about how his full juvenile name was Prince Mark Fairykin Chang. Whatever it was about that name which had caused the attraction of her attention via her optical orbs in a metaphorical way, it was good enough for him.

"Well, then I bestow upon you my permission that you are welcome to take as long as you so want to mourn, Vick-ay. And whenever it is that you have completed your show of grief and weeping, the table is set and I have brought-en out the quad-pronged instruments of the silver Earth feasting. As Doidle's closest com-pan-ee-un, you will, of course, be having the honor of making the first selection of scrumptious meat upon his body. Personally, I might suggest that tender rear left leg, huh."

That finally did it. In multiple ways. His half-blackened tentacle snapped off from the rest of his body (at least it would grow back). Then Vicky dropped it to the trash and dirt with a thud and stared at him. It was the same look that she had affixed to him back when they had first met up in Timmy Turner's room of resting. Then she had given it again back when he had first returned to take her back with him to Yugopotamia. Once more back when his Justin Jake Ashton disguise had rippled and failed for the first time in her arms. And how, again, for the sake of painful and necessary reiteration, she had looked him up and down and had sniffed at him and stalked off. It was a look that not even a Yugopotamian could ever love. At least, not on the face of someone whose affections that had been trying for so long to win. Not when the angel bearing the disgusted, gaping, furified expression belonged to a culture so com-plee-ta-lee opposite his own.

Chloe Car of Michael was fully of likeness probability to run short of peeve-ed scowls at this rate. Timmy Turner had jolted up. Tootie Little Sister began to look quite sick and green in her face. Their wing-ed floating friends were conspiring in soft voices, and possibly planning to aim their wands at him. Even Sparky Stealer of Souls had lifted his head. Mark shifted his eyes between the three humans, drawing his remaining coils safely away from anyone who might wish to whimper into them next.

"Unless I am misinter-per-itting the expressions upon your squishy human faces, I take it that this is not the way you comm-un-ly dispose of bodies on your plan-et?"

"Not all of us are complete monsters, you sick trash compactor." Vicky shoved him with both hands. Mark moved maybe a quarter of an inch in response, his squishy body enveloping her fingertips. His skin rippled like swamp water encased in overcooked jello. Normally he loved it when she did that before they broke into one of their frequent cross-culture fights. This time it hurt. He reached out to Vicky, intending to soothe her in a hug the way the Earthlings seemed to be fond of, but she slapped his tentacle away. Sparky Stealer of Souls was passed off to Tootie Little Sister. Timmy Turner jumped up and touched a hand to one of Mark's lower coils, but the squid thrust him back with a second one. Was not his business.

"Well, he is dead, Vick-ay. And he is here in the dump. What would you expect me, who is a Yugopotamian, to be doing with him?"

"Uh, you could just _leave_ him." Vicky spat the last words between her teeth. "You could leave him right there. He's. Happily. Buried."

He could not manage to stay upset with her when she got that way. As Vicky turned around to take her frustration out on the well-placed Timmy Turner, he kneaded his coils into the dirt and allowed her to have her moment. He would remain quiet, and dwell amidst only his thoughts.

"You can't have Sparky," he heard the human boy shout. "He's mine! Just- just go get a new dog from some evil puppy mill or something. That suits you."

"Gee, Timmy," Sparky Stealer of Souls said, "I don't know about this anymore. When do we get the funeral potatoes and head back home? I gotta use the Dinkleberg's lawn."

Vicky ignored his speech, as she tended to. Instead, she rounded on Chloe Car of Michael. "And you, blondie-"

Mark snorted to himself, folding several pairs of tentacles across his chest. Gazing down into the uncovered hole that he had so graciously used his ship's resources to power the weapons to blast in the ground, he said, "What a horr-ific waste of beautiful furry skin. For years and years upon end, I have long been watching him and thinking that he looked so delicious, too."

Vicky tossed Chloe Car of Michael back on the trash couch beside Tootie Little Sister with a thump. Grabbing Mark's narrow shoulder, she wrenched him around. "You are not going to eat Doidle!" The spittle flew in his face. It did not burn his skin in the way her rare and beloved kisses did, at least, so that was a plus.

"So it is better that he rots there? Why should the worms be welcome to partake in this delicious feasting, while I am left to simply drool and crave?" He knotted three of his tentacles together in pleading fists as he threw back his head so hard, he nearly bashed open his glass dome on an ancient Earth TV set partially buried in rubble and sticky brown sludge. "I cannot stand for this for very much longer, Vick-ay! I cannot go on living this way!"

Chloe Car of Michael's face had gone absolutely purple. Her freckles burned with a scarlet flare. She stuck a finger in the air, opening her mouth, but Timmy Turner threw his arm up to block her and she snapped it shut again.

"Mark," Timmy said as the Yugopotamian oozed away among the trash, "Doidle died of _rabies_. You really shouldn't be eating him anyway."

"Oh, I was wondering what happened to the head," Chloe Car of Michael mumbled into her bundle of deadly pink and purple flowers.

"She is like, so sentimental," he growled, plucking up a discarded tin can. He bit into the serrated lid. It did not taste nearly as good as he had been hoping for it to, and he chose to throw it aside in search of something else. Still chewing metal, he tossed back, "If there will not be any feast or ceremony to be taking part in, then I am like, out of here now. Later."

Vicky's hair bristled. "Hey! I'd rather be sentimental than a cannibal, Justin. Big gross alien or not, how you even live with yourself, I will never comprehend!"

"Cannibal? Oh, no." He gave his head a shake as he dragged a piece of chandelier from under a makeshift cardboard tent. As he did so, he took the opportunity to do as the Earthlings had taught him and he sort of twisted with another shrug. "We like, _never_ eat our fellow Yugopotamians. We eat those guys who die on all the other planets. They even do sacrifices on my parents' birthdays, sh'yeah."

"I'm not hearing this, not hearing this," murmured Chloe Car of Michael, her ears plugged with the tips of her fat fingers.

Timmy Turner scrubbed behind his neck; Vicky crossed her arms. "So it's fine, as long as it isn't your people. Great. That's even more revolting to hear. And just when I thought you couldn't get any more disgusting than you already were. Maybe we really should break up again."

If Mark had a spine, it would have stiffened. Vicky played that card on him a lot, but only when she was serious about it. Or at least, he thought she might be serious- it was difficult to interpret such things from the high strain of human voices. He had a very difficult problem inter-per-itting sarcasm, even now after all the years or months that Timmy Turner had pulled him aside for what he liked to call 'blending-in lessons'. Mark lay the cardboard tent back down where he had first identified and located it and slurped his way back to her side. Being a Yugopotamian, he weaved through the garbage easily, never sticking deeply into it the way the other humans did with their greasy shoes. His tentacles outstretched, he cooed, "Aw, come on there, Vick-ay babe."

"Hmph."

"Vick- ow!" Shaking a black-tipped coil singed by his longing for her cruel attention, he wrapped one of the others around her left leg and another up by her neck. She refused to glance down at him, her eyes focused upwards in space in the opposite direction, her arms crossed over her chest.

" _Vick-ay_ ," he wheedled a third and final time, "you do not need to be this way with me. You know that when you are playing hard to get in this way you are doing, it is only for resulting in making me more and more likely to be shorting out my Fakeifier. I only ask that you like, try to understand how difficult it is to be me, who is attempting to slot myself into your human Earthling culture."

"Lose the slimy alien look, Chang. Then we'll talk."

"Right." Withdrawing, he groped for the dial on his Fakeifier and clicked it through his alligator, fountain pen, brass park statue, piggy bank, graduation hat, pixie, sandal, and rocking chair forms before he landed upon the tall, thin, scruffy blond moody teen dream human Earth boy that she so very much enjoyed to admire him in, much more than his true alien shape that she always threw the nastiest and most affectionate words at. Evidently, he and she had both cooled off enough affection-wise to allow him to hold the form, even though when he popped into it, he had to spread his arms and position his feet in just the precise way in order to keep his balance and not plop face-forward into the masses of trash. Mark took an awkward step before he remembered how it was exactly that humans were capable of manipulating their ungainly top-heavy bodies for the purposes of movement.

"I was saying only, Vick-ay," he continued, picking up her rough hands in his squishy ones - no helping the squish, no matter what his shape or how advanced his race's technology - "that corpses are a rare delicacy on my plan-et, and it is considered most shameful to let one such as this go to waste. My people do not leave, like, corpses themselves, so from the time that we are chicks, we are all taught that we must be taking the most supreme advantage of their delicious nutrients when they fall upon our laps and stuff, huh."

"I'm leaving," announced Chloe Car of Michael. She bounced away between mountains of brown trash and dinged-up cars. Sparky Stealer of Souls paused one last time by Doidle's unfilled grave before trotting after her, his tail beating back and forth like a flag.

"That's not real," Vicky said.

Mark brought one of his free tentacles to his tie and gave it a slight pull. "Okay, so. Eh. Vick-ay, do you remember that day at the grossissary store when you were making the buying of the chocolate bars and I was telling you about the nature of the week of F.L.A.R.G. that is celebrated by my people?"

She skimmed her eyes over him, still leaning slightly away as she sized up his human disguise for chinks. He had taken the opportunity to improve the design in slight ways around the stomachal midsection region since last they had visited the alley behind his favorite fast food location in Dimmsdale and conversed, and she clear-i-ly liked what she was finding there now. "Yeah?"

"Then you are recalling how it is our appendixes will burst like firework rockets under the hot tongue of a flamey-thrower if we are not capable of reaching peak elation within that framing of time?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Well, since you were asking for the explanation, I must inform you that when we Yugopotamians like, die or whatever, we explode."

Vicky thought about this.

She thought about this for a long time. Then she said a sharp word under her breath.

"You know what I think, Justin? I really think we'd better cancel our skydiving trip to Australia, juuust in case. Saves the fuel in your spaceship anyway. Now, here." She tossed him one shovel. Timmy Turner got the second and Tootie Little Sister the third before she jabbed a crooked claw-like finger at the hole where they had placed the headless black and white dog. "You and the twerp, start filling! And if I hear any complaints out of either of you, then I can promise there is going to be some serious trouble. I don't need fancy European-whatsit technology to kick your lazy butts into doing the work I brought you out here for. Hey, blondie twerpette!"

Mark leaned on his shovel as she flounced off in search of Chloe Car of Michael. He sighed in a wistful way. Then, blinking himself from his trance, he dipped the point of his spade in the dirt.

"But do you really think she would notice if I like, snuck a nibble out of that drool-worthy haunch, Turner? What if it was a really tiny little nibble? You do not think she would, right? Huh."


	15. (93) Unwelcome

_Summary:_ Poof is trying out for the high school saucerbee team. Foop wants to join in, but Coach is reluctant to let an anti-fairy play.

 _Characters:_ Poof, Foop, assorted fairies, Goldie

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Tools of the Trade" / "Opinion"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **93\. Unwelcome** (Post-series)

 _Year of Leaves; Winter of the White Strawberry_

( **A/N:** See also, "This Is Your Wish")

* * *

"You have to be yanking my wings," Amelli groaned from somewhere on his left. Turning, she flapped the card she'd drawn at the rest of the two dozen or so of them crammed onto the bench. "I have to do a _war tank_? I don't know the first thing about tanks. What did you pull, Poof?"

He shrugged. "Walrus. Sorry. Good luck."

"Quiet there near the dugout. Quiet!"

Poof tightened his headband beneath his thick purple curl with a tug sharp enough to rattle its heart-shaped badge. His ponytail bumped between his shoulder blades as he stood. Playtime had finally arrived.

Gray eyes flicked right, then left. Wings thrummed as Coach paced – in the air, of course – up and down the line, tugging one of his antennae. "All right, you bunch of juvenile hopefuls. For many of you, this is your last shot at making the team before you'll graduate and head off to another century of high school. That's where the real competition will begin. Now, let's see what fresh meat this year's crop has raked in. Present your wands!"

They went up as instructed- near the right cheek, with the right hand positioned above and the left hand across the body and below. Cheston Maycott dropped his from a pale jittering hand, but Poof wasn't at all concerned. He'd made the cut every year for a decade, and he still had two years ahead of him before graduation. Coach made a signal to a nearby sylph at the launch cart, she clutching uncertainly at the brim of her pointed, star-patterned hat.

"Release the targets."

One jerk of a handle later, ten white discs with gold stars painted in their middles went soaring over the heads of the anxious and/or giddy Fairies below.

"Tea-saucers live!" Coach blew his whistle, then dropped it and clapped his hands in rapid succession as the Fairies on the line dropped or pocketed their cards, shoved down their wings, and jumped skyward. "Let's move it, move it, Poofypants Scarabs! It's already four o'clock, and I want to be back with the wife in time for dinner tonight. Claybrook, snap to it!"

Maxwell spun his wand and fired a sharp blast at the nearest saucer. In a burst of pink sparkles, it twisted shape into a scrawny vulture. Poof ducked its talons and joined his fellows in the spiral swarm above, waiting for his cue.

"Lyfeld!"

Lester was a natural-born show-off. He back-flipped from the cluster of zipping Fairies, tucking in his wings. As he fell, he tossed his wand from right hand to left and cast his beam. _Poof!_ One of the other discs turned into a slender otter, which he caught in his arms and tossed to Saffron, who tossed it to Caleb, who tossed it through the end zone goal; it turned instantly back into a saucer, and Lester flashed over to catch it on the other side. The other discs were nearing the grass at rapid speed, but they would veer away. They were programmed to be evasive if they wanted to.

"Awish, Thimble, Corbett- go!"

 _Poof, poof, poof!_ Battering ram, elephant, water bottle-

"Strader, Cosma, Dyeberry!"

Goldie (Sweet Goldie) started a cheer down below, and the thin crowd picked it up: "Poof, Poof, Poof, Poof!"

The fairy waited for the other two to make their move so their beams wouldn't collide in a messy mixture of machinery and animal parts and make all of them look like fools. Once he found a stray saucer, he aimed his wand and prepared an elegant spin that would make him look a lot better at the game than unfamiliar onlookers might expect from his heavier body. But just as he fired, a thick zigzag of blue careened upwards from the opposite side of the cloud-link fence that surrounded the high school's field. A snapping sound. A guttural moan. Poof veered away, barrel-rolling until he pulled up facing the flailing giraffe as it swiped its hooves and plunged towards the purple grass. "What the-?"

Coach threw down his clipboard and beat his way towards the bleachers. "All right, which of you sideliners did that? There is no bystander magic allowed during tryouts. Hover, Cosma; I'll ensure you get your chance." (A joke- Poof's place was as good as secured anyway.)

A blue-furred drake with two shadowy bat wings curling from the back of his lime-colored speech-and-debate team t-shirt took a step forward, amid a heavy chorus of jeers and scoldings. Tilting up his chin, he purred, "I'm te _rrr_ ibly sorry I'm late, Coach. Someone accidentally transformed an apple into a rhinoceros while I was on my way through the halls, and if I was going to be missing the card drawing, I figured I couldn't simply walk out here without pulling a little stunt to get your attention somehow. Heh-ah! Aha!"

One of the qalupalik in the stands batted at the fluffy fence. "Hey, preppy! Get off the field!"

"You're not supposed to interfere!"

"Poofypants Green's not your color!"

"This isn't a game for an anti-fairy!"

"Who let you through the Barrier anyway?"

"You can't play when Poof makes the team!"

"Go back to biology class, Anti-Cosma!"

The anti-fairy flicked his eyes in the direction of the tall-crowned nix who had called that last part. Leaning an elbow against the fence, he _twang_ ed his mustache and said, "It's Anti-Fairywinkle, actually. Or Anti-Cosma-Anti-Fairywinkle if you really want to focus on the nitty-gritty technicalities. As any real Fairy of any intelligence ought to know, on our side of the Divide, we get our surnames from our mothers."

"Poof," Amelli hissed, floating closer as one of the lonely saucers bumped up against her stomach, "what are you doing? He's yours! Go talk to him."

"Um. Right. Okay." As the booing continued, Poof dipped down to meet him and the Coach. He checked over his shoulder as he stilled his wings and touched down in the glittering grass. "Hey, Foop, what's going on? This is the saucerbee team tryouts."

"I'm well aware of that, creampuff." Foop gestured to his brightly-colored, er, 'uniform' with his dark wand. "And here I am, trying out at tryouts. Really, whyever did you think I was even here?"

As Coach refocused his attention on a brownie who had been zapped by a misfired spell and flipped into a small bald squirrel that was now terrorizing the others with laser-vision, Poof narrowed his eyes. "You don't even know how to play."

"Oh, if that's what you think, then mentally prepare yourself to see what Uncle Cosmo got me when I paid a visit to him on his last birthday. Which you never bothered to show up for, I might add. Wallah! Feast your eyes upon _this_ nasty crumpet!"

"'How to Play Saucerbee Like Henry Huddlewand: An Instant Classic'." Poof sighed and took the book away. He tossed it on the ends of the bleachers that stuck out from behind the fence. "Saucerbee's not something you can just read about in your dorm and all of a sudden get good at, Foop. It's something you have to… _experience_ , y'know? Listen. My place in this school is out here on the field. Yours is in your weird lab doing… whatever those nerdy dissection things you do all day are."

Foop straightened up, either offended or just playing the part as he stroked his goatee. "That's strange, but I don't quite remember 'Foop is not allowed to branch out to other areas of interest besides the ones he has already expressed interest in' being anywhere in the school rulebook."

Poof gave a grunt. "Oh, right. I forgot you actually read that thing."

"When you're on the lower end of the social ladder, you have to know what the exact rules and loopholes are so you're prepared when someone tries to use them against you, and you don't get thrown out." Sticking his wand behind his back, he rocked on his heels to his toes to his heels. He was smiling. "You may not know this, Poof, but thanks to that un _fortun_ ate mishap of yours truly swallowing your instinct to destroy him back while he was only lifesmoke, I'm quite lucky to be allowed to attend a school full of Seelie Courters. I happen to like it here, and I would prefer not to call Jorgen's attention to myself and end up losing my Barrier-crossing privileges."

"Why this sudden random interest in the game?"

"Why? Well, partly because I've bet a large amount of money on my ability to show up my competitors, partly because I've never played this sport and it looks interesting, and partly because I'm sick and tired of you breaking our limbs every couple of weeks without me getting so much as a say-so in it." He gestured at his right arm to indicate the core-sync. "If you're going to drag me along through that, I really think I deserve the chance to defend myself, don't you think so?"

"Foop, if this is just a joke to you-"

The gnarled hands came up, palms outward and vibrating back and forth. "No, no joke, Poof. I know how it works. Three teams on the field, fourteen players to a team with six allowed out at a time, all of them grappling for the coveted opportunity to shoot at the ten live tea-saucers while they dart about out here like utter moronic simpletons-"

The fairy grimaced. "Yes, I've been team captain for three years running. I've played saucerbee since I was little league age. I think I know how it all works."

"The goal of the game is to use magic to shapeshift the tea-saucer into something bigger and better than what the person from the other team before you did, with points being awarded for time, accuracy, ability, presentation, and result, but no duplicates are allowed even across all eleven rounds, and bringing the shifted saucer to the end zone on the opposite end of the field will result in the ringing up of major bonus points. While the end zone itself may not be guarded directly, the goal of those who play defense is to triage which ex-saucers are worth-"

"Okay, okay. I get it. You know a thing or two about the sport." Poof twirled his kitnut wand between his fingers and clenched it in his fist. "Go… wait for your cue up in the swarm with everybody else. I'll pull a string and make sure Coach lets you try out."

The 'Boo!'s echoed back with renewed vigor as Foop swaggered his way across the field with wings beating, bowing and blowing kisses. "Ancient King Nuada help me," muttered Poof, and kicked into the air again.

He got the signal from Coach before he even joined up again with the rest of the other Fairies. "Cosma, next one's all yours. Release the second batch!"

As the sylph fired off the tea-saucers again, Poof lifted one finger and raised his eyebrows in Foop's general direction. Coach gave him a, _You let me worry about that and play, dangit_ hand wave in response.

Poof dove down, gathered momentum, and spiraled upwards again as the spinning discs fast approached. Weaving between the first three or four, he front-flipped and, while upside-down, zapped one on the end with bright yellow. Both hands clenched around the handle of his wand. The saucer erupted into a fatty brown walrus. It bellowed and aimed for him with its fangs (tusks- they were tusks) as it fell. After a blink of hesitation, Poof morphed himself into a magic carpet, caught it with a blurp, and sped for the end zone.

"Defense team, strike! Hawtry, Bredhem, Sparklespit!"

Poof whizzed between beams as best as he was able to, which, as a widespread target with an enormous walrus bearing down on his back, was not very well at all. He probably made it about four yards before someone scored a hit and _poof_ ed him into a dot-sized housefly. The walrus's weight sent them plowing towards the grass. Poof barely managed to make it out from beneath the thing before painful bone-splitting impact (though, looking back on it there was no reason to really panic about getting squashed, as the saucer of course flipped back to its natural state before it _chuff_ ed and rolled across the grass).

"Not bad for knowing you had no back-up, Cosma," Coach called, golf-clapping as Karina turned him back to normal and Poof shook the effects of fagigglyne off. "Remember, everyone- coordination and cooperation a successful team makes. Anti-Fairywinkle? Let's see what you've got."

Well, this ought to be good. Poof drifted over behind Coach's shoulder. There he hovered, his left leg straight and his right slightly bent. He folded his arms. Who exactly was this geeky free-tail who thought he could make it representing the Poofypants Scarabs on the saucerbee fields?

Turns out, he was Anti-Poof "Foop" Anti-Cosma-Anti-Fairywinkle. As he whirled in circles and blasted in the general direction of every loose saucer (they scattered in a panic, hiding behind any Fairy capable of offering cover that they could find), Poof found himself gawking. He was good.

He was really, really good.

Uncomfortably good.

Henry Huddlewand kind of good.

Poof realized his hands had inched over his mouth while Foop spun, zapped tea-saucers into various poultry and office supplies, and ducked the occasional counterblow from a signaled Fairy in the swarm. "That's not possible," he found himself whispering to no one but his own ears. The sickliness made his wings skip multiple beats. "He's- he's my opposite. He can't- he can't- The only way he could be that good is, is if _I'm_ actually the one who…"

Coach batted Poof's shoulder with one of his antennae, not even taking his eyes away from the spiraling anti-fairy. "Don't flap your wings dustless, Cosma. Free-tailed bats are the anti-fairy patron specifically because the dragonfly is yours- you're _both_ supposed to be the fastest subspecies of your Court. He's thin and better at weaving, and he's undoubtedly more powerful transformation-wise, but you are faster on the draw and more accurate. Look; he's only hit five of them. You'd have at least seven or eight by this time if that was you up there. Granted, you also probably would've been turned into a dung beetle by this point, so take that as you choose." He made a mark on his clipboard. "I've seen enough. Time to break the bad news to him. You can flit back up there and keep playing around if you want, but you could just as easily go home- you've won your spot, bucko."

"You're not letting Foop on the team?"

"No, I am not." The imp started to drift away. Poof chased after him, running his fingers through his ponytail.

"Coach, trust me when I say this- I don't _want_ Foo- Er, Anti-Poof to play on the team with me, but he's totally better than two-thirds of the guys up there. We could really use him."

"Cosma, an Anti-Fairy can't play on the team when his host is already on it. Because something like _this_ " – lurching suddenly around, Coach sliced Poof's head off with a long knife he apparently kept on his person just for this purpose, causing the fairy to gasp out of impulse as his head plopped into his own hands – "could happen at any time, and I'd lose two very capable players in an instant as opposed to one."

From his new, stunted height, Poof peered into the sky. Foop's head had popped off for no real reason, and the anti-fairy shrieked as he plowed into the floating scoreboard. His clawed fingers scrambled for a hold, but after about three seconds, his body tumbled after his plummeting skull.

"You see that?" Coach asked, pointing with his thumb. "That doesn't happen to all Anti-Fairies when magical injuries are concerned. And when it does, the delay is usually longer between."

"Well, yes, I understand that, but-"

"Coach," Foop complained, headlessly stumbling towards them with his arms waving, "what the smoof was that just then?"

Those gray eyes came flicking up and down again. "That was basic science. We've all known it for years, but due to how powerful your shared magic pool is, your sync is thick and tight. Much more than most, and particularly as you've aged. You're not both worth keeping. Poof, I've thrown you into enough games over the years and watched you blaze through them to feel comfortable sticking with you. Welcome back to the team."

His knife had been magic-touched, fortunately, so there was no blood, no lasting damage besides the startled, frizzing pain, and Poof reattached his head on his neck easily and with a light popping noise. "But Coach, can't you make an…"

Pause, followed by a swallow with a throat that was grateful to be reattached. Was he really about to defend his nemesis?

"… an exception? I watched him, and Anti-Poof's fast and accurate." Leaning closer as Foop wandered about in search of his own head (they may have severed in sync, but that didn't mean they were going to piece themselves together automatically without someone picking the blue one up), the fairy added, "And he looks like he's really actually enjoying it. I think- I honestly think this will help him be, well… better-liked by the student body. He could make friends. It can help him be a nicer person. Can't you let him have his moment?"

Coach gave a sharp flap of his wings that ruffled Poof's blue headband and his thick purple curl. "My mind is made up, Cosma. Either I take you, or I take Anti-Fairywinkle. There's no room on the team for both of you."

"Well, the choice is obvious, then," Foop's head said from the grass ("I'm over this way, you oaf! Yes, come on, you big lug, you're almost there.") "Poof's played on the team for years. Seeing as we are both fully capable players, it seems only fair that I should have a shot at the game, doesn't it?"

Coach looked at Poof, as though asking for permission. The result of which would be, well… like Foop said: obvious. Poof looked down at the handle of his wand, twisting it between chubby hands. When he dared to let his eyes flicker up again, he quietly drank in the way that Foop's powder-blue cheeks deepened into purple. The wand came up in the hand of his body, which now clutched his head beneath one arm. His other hand lashed like a blind thing.

"You- you can't be serious! Didn't you see me up there, Coach? I've been studying saucerbee players and both the mainstream offensive and defensive tactics for _years_ , waiting for this day to arrive! I astounded the audience, wowed the crowds! I'm far better than most of those four-winged twits darting about like that, and any one of them could tell you so. I'm mint! Don't I even get a chance? I deserve one!"

"Anti-Fairywinkle, you can't even see glass. That makes you an enormous liability for the indoor season."

"But- but- Surely with my echolocation-"

"What, amongst the cheering crowds?"

"I can filter…"

After lifting an eyebrow, Coach blew a long, shrill note on his whistle. Out of impulse, Foop dropped his head and his hands flew to the place above his body where they would normally find his pointed ears. His eyelids screwed up, his fangs clamped on the tip of his tongue, and his entire figure convulsed into a half-ball. A low whimper wriggled up from the body, not his mouth. His wings beat with harsh pumps just to keep him from dropping to his knees.

"Sorry," Poof whispered, praying in silence that his voice didn't crack out loud as much as he thought it did. "Saucerbee's important to me, Foop. I'm not just going to give it up so you can mess around for a year."

When Foop picked up his head again, his entire face had twisted. "Maybe I didn't _want_ to be the piece of you that broke off to become your anti-fairy. Don't I even get a-"

Coach slapped his groping hand away. "It's you or your counterpart, Anti-Poof. And if you don't like the way we run things at Poofypants, then you can turn tail and _poof_ on back to Anti-Fairy World." As he turned his back, he added like an indirect afterthought, "That's where all your kind belong anyway."

* * *

 **A/N:** Kudos to those who caught that the laser squirrel was a reference to "Total Drama" Season 4.


	16. (98) Terrible Timing

_Summary:_ The events of "Crocker Shocker" drained power from Pixie World; Longwood reluctantly tracks down the lost Sanderson.

 _Characters:_ Longwood, Naelita, Rosencrantz, H.P., assorted pixies, Sanderson

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Tools of the Trade" / "Shadow"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **98\. Terrible Timing** ("Crocker Shocker")

 _Year of Water; Winter of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

"Are you staying hydrated, tip-top?" she asked.

"Well enough, thank you, Nat. It's been a cool day today."

"So, um, is Sunday your giant end-of-the-year 'How I contributed to the company and the human race' presentation? You're not overly anxious, I hope? I'm sure you're going to do fabulously on it, right?"

Longwood leaned his chair against the wall, twirling his pen between his fingers. The soft spinning sound blended with the static twitch of the phone at his ear. "I might need a little more luck than that. Sanderson and Hawkins teamed up against me and Wilcox again. H.P. _always_ pairs me with Wilcox. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a pixie who can't keep his eyes on the task at hand for longer than ten minutes without giving into the urge to shapeshift into a purple rat or a lizard or a canary?"

"Um. Have I?"

"No. But- but this! He was in here yesterday yakking on about how he'd left his wand back at Rapunzel and he needed to borrow mine so he could get his fagigglyne fix. Ten minutes, Naelita. He almost could have skimmed there and back in that time."

She laughed just long enough to make Longwood almost smile. "At least he's one of the smarter ones, right? Can you imagine if you had to work with Sanderson?"

"Oh, don't even go there."

"Hey, of course not- aren't you the boss?"

"Of you, maybe, given that you're a selkie." He adjusted his star-tipped hat with the cap of his pen. "But someday, Naelita, everything that can be seen from the penthouse tower will be mine. And then." His fingers curled. He squinted behind his shades. Tightening his teeth, slashing a line across the top of the stack of papers on his desk, "And then, I can assure you that there will be no more ridiculous thirty-seven-year plans to take over Fairy World."

"Really? Isn't that, um, against everything you guys stand for? Pixie tradition?"

"It's not Pixie tradition. It's just H.P.'s… thing. He just won't let it go. But when I'm in charge, there will be no more aggressive attempts to get the Fairies to treat us like we're more than just a servant race if they don't want to. There are five hundred of us against a million of them; there's no _chance_ to change their minds. We're going to accept who we are, and nobody is going to get hurt anymore. We'll be going passively-aggressive neutral, all day, all the time. Just like Mother Nature intended."

Quiet. Naelita liked her silence, and he liked letting her have it. Still pressing the little flip phone to his ear with his shoulder, Longwood leaned his cheek to his hand and picked up another paper. "What exactly is this? Why am I being instructed to add a saucerbee field on the east end? Why does H.P. go over these things with Hawkins and Sanderson and not with me? I was under the impression that we already have a saucerbee field that we never use except when Hamilton occasionally decides to set up his multi-muscle lemonade stand in it or something."

"Doesn't your Head Pixie own a saucerbee team or something?"

Longwood sized up the short stack of paperwork in the black wire basket on the edge of his desk. Much too short. "Yes. An utterly pointless waste of money if you ask me, which isn't like him, but he couldn't resist. We're still talking about me, right? Because really, so many questions. And this one- this one: 'Move Jensen's office down to Floor 3'. Shouldn't this be the Fairy resources manager's job?" He dropped it. "I'm in charge of a dozen buildings fully-staffed at all hours, and I don't have enough to do. Perhaps I'll take up monochrome painting in my off-time. You're still there, aren't you, Nel?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I see you later?"

She sighed. "Isn't it Thursday? Don't you get off early this afternoon?"

"I might," he said, fingering the zipper of his brown jacket. He could cancel with Wilcox again on the pretense of vice president duties; all that was left to do with their presentation was cut out the different (and already printed) bullet-pointed segments, back them on dull gray paper, and glue them to the dull gray poster board. That was easily done by one pixie alone.

"Then could you make up your mind before I miss the tram? Maybe I could… grab you a sandwich and a lemonade or something? Um, and I'll meet you up in your room by the time you float back?"

"I'm listening."

"Okay…" Longwood heard her sharp nails drumming. "And I guess H.P. doesn't have to know if I don't go home tonight? Not if you don't answer your phone? I mean, he can't spot-check your place every evening, right?"

"Hm?" He was already daydreaming of movies they could watch. He liked movies, especially the calmer ones in simple black and white. "I still have that quilt you gave me a couple winters ago. We could curl up on the couch and fall asleep snuggled up like seals."

"So, sandwich?"

"With water. No ice. Just plain and dull."

"And maybe we could, uh, hold hands or something?"

He licked his teeth. "That's a bit forward, but I did enjoy that last time. You win- it's a date. While you're there, we should watch another one of those older classics. Anything but 'Wizard of Oz', I'm good with."

"Isn't it my week to pick? How does 'Bye Bye Birdie' sound? _Whatcha wanna go get pinned for?"_

" _If you gotta go, that's the way to go. When they've gotcha hooked, then you're really cooked. Whatcha gonna-"_

The lights popped. There was no flicker, no buzz, no warning before the room plunged into absolute darkness. Frustrated pixie voices rang out up and down the hall from those who hadn't recently saved their work on the computers. Longwood glanced at the ceiling, waiting for the backup generator to kick in. It didn't.

"… I'm going to have to call you back, knick-knack. Power's totally dead and H.P. might need to get through." He hung up and pocketed the phone. He sat a moment more, arms folded, as he awaited the lights that would not return. Finally, the dead heater forced him to drop his seat onto all (floating) fours and sent him pacing so he could keep warm.

People. Doors. Voices. Wings. Longwood wanted to be out there in the halls, joining in the anxious chatter. Oh, he wanted it and it stung him deep that he couldn't have it. But he forced himself to grind his teeth and keep behind his door. As company vice president, he wasn't permitted to leave his office- not if he weren't on break. Even for the annual Olympics. Either the generator would kick in, or H.P. would send him instructions on what to do. That was how it would be. That was the rule that had been drilled into his head time and time again. The minutes squealed by like rusty conveyor belts across tin.

Longwood was deep in a game of _Should I, Shouldn't I?_ as he clung to his phone when, after half an hour of blackness, a tentative knock sounded at the door. The pixie drew back the little curtain over his window and made out a glowing blue dot in the black of the hall. He clicked his tongue.

"Lower your starpiece and state your name."

"It's Rose. Oh, um, Wilcox is with me too."

"Why are-? Well, all right. You're allowed in on the grounds that you're Rosebud." Longwood swung his door inward and Rosencrantz scuttled through, clutching an ambiguous furry lump to his chest. He let it drop to the floor. After throwing Wilcox a ticked glance, Longwood pressed, "But why are you on the C-level floor? Especially you, Rosie- shouldn't you be down the street in laundry?"

"I was delivering a m-message to Madigan, and you know I get fluster-nerves about carrying letters alone like that." Rosencrantz tapped his fingertips together and appeared to glance away in the dark, probably dwelling on all the reasons why he was grateful the boss had never named one of them Guildenstern. There was a motion like he'd tucked a loose strand of black hair behind his ear. "When S-Sanderson was my mentor, he always taught me that you're the safest one to be around when things go wrong, because you'll protect me."

Longwood narrowed his eyes. "Sanderson said that? Why?"

"Because you're a big squeamish nymph when it comes to blood."

"Okay, wow." Longwood opened his door again and made an attempt to propel the undersized pixie back into the hallway, with its wandering crowd, whipping wings, and clumsy feet. Rosencrantz squeaked like a selkie and clung to the frame of the door.

"Um- um- Why are you still inside your office?"

"I'm waiting for H.P.'s instructions, as is proper protocol." Longwood's lip twitched. His eyes slid down towards the floor. "Wilcox, are you winding your dirty self around my legs?"

The pat of soft paws on paper made it obvious that the purple cat had just leapt onto his desk. "Sorry. I like to keep tabs on where everybody is."

"You're a cat. You can see in the dark five times better than we can."

"Oh. Then I've got nothing. Are you wearing Naelita's coat?"

Longwood removed his shades and rubbed them on his shirt. After he replaced them, he half-wondered why he'd bothered to do that. It made no difference in the dark. His ear itched. "Is that important?"

"Write me a check for a couple hundred, let me sleep in the rabbit hutch tonight, and it doesn't have to be. If you know what I mean."

No, H.P. couldn't find out. So, Longwood stripped off the fluffy brown coat and, once he'd kicked it beneath his desk, he muttered agreement. As he did, his phone let out a chirpy noise inside his actual gray jacket. He flicked the cover down and held it to his ear. "We're Pixies, Vice President Longwood speaking, how may I help you?"

"Head Pixie on the line. Send out an alert for everyone to follow emergency evacuation procedure immediately. Thane and I have been examining the generator, but it won't come on. It would appear there is purple fur or something of the like lodged in the vent."

Rosencrantz and Wilcox gulped audibly.

"Yes, sir. Will that be all?"

It was, so Longwood did as he was instructed and _ping_ ed off the proper text. Beyond his door, he could hear ringtones up and down the hallway as it spread from the top-tiers of the company down to those on the lower end. Stuffing his cell phone away again, he called, "Come on, Rosebud. Wilcox."

Now that official instructions had been released, things were flowing much more smoothly beyond the door. In an orderly fashion, pixies were exiting the building. The three of them caught up with Madigan near one of the stairwells, not taking the stairs but flying straight down between the wideset spirals, as they tended to.

"I wonder sometimes why we don't just go out the windows," Rosencrantz muttered.

"What exactly are you implying?" asked Longwood, turning his head.

"Well, um, I just think it would be faster. To get outside that way."

He blinked a defensive blink. "The entrance to the building is located at the bottom of the structure."

"I dunno. Maybe we should think about updating evacuation procedures, sir."

"Have you ever even seen a paper wasp nest?" Longwood touched his finger to the starless tip of Rosencrantz's fabric hat. "Listen, Rosie- when you're vice president of the colony – I mean, company – then you can draw up all the evacuation procedures you want. But climbing through the windows is most certainly not professional workplace behavior."

Rosencrantz fiddled with the largest button on his oversized suit coat and remained silent.

Outside in the square, pixies gathered in clumps on the wall of the dreary fountain, on chew-proof metal benches, or in the air to gaze quietly at the ever-starry sky above their heads. The Sun had moved on its westward course between Earth and the cloudlands. Longwood left his companions behind and flew off to meet the Head Pixie, who hovered only a short ways from the Headquarters building with his right fist planted to his hip and baby Finley sleeping in his other arm. All the windows almost glowed with darkness above them.

"Sir?"

H.P. replaced his starpiece in his jacket. Clearly, it hadn't had any effect at bringing light back to the building. Straightening his tie with two fingers, he sighed slightly through his nose. "And this would be why my father told me it was a bad idea to invest in magic lightbulbs."

"Sorry." Really, it ought to be against every instinct he had in his body to argue, or to dare to ask a question, but Longwood couldn't make his eyes move away from the faded scars along H.P.'s right cheek. It wasn't possible for the Head Pixie to screw up _that_ badly. No one was laughing, but this had to be a joke. "You strung magic lightbulbs through the company, sir?"

The boss's salty glare shut him up. "I don't need this from you today, Longwood. It was a different time back then. I was working through some personal issues involving my- Never mind. This is going to put us deeply behind schedule if we dawdle."

"My apologies, H.P. Would you please review the facts of the case with me so I can ensure I'm on level with your knowledge?"

"'The facts of the case'? You've been watching Sherlock Homely with Naelita again, haven't you?"

Longwood opened his mouth, but no words came out. H.P. shook his head.

"The Big Wand in Fairy World must have shut down, for reasons presently unknown. This hasn't happened for centuries, and the last time it did, you were away on some frivolous errand to James Madison, or some sort of odd tidbit."

"It was the Constitutional Convention."

"Whatever that is."

"… Sir, it was kind of important."

"It was the document that freed the enslaved Unseelie in the Earth's mainland, wasn't it?"

Close enough, except for the part about how the African-Americans weren't anything like the human version of Anti-Fairies, and the part where, well, it wasn't. Longwood nodded, just barely enough that H.P. wouldn't expect a further answer from him, but subtlely enough that he might question later whether Longwood had actually agreed or stayed silent. Satisfied, the Head Pixie turned away and snapped his fingers over his head, twice. Within a couple of wingbeats, the square fell silent. Phones disappeared in pockets, except for those who (to put it gently) weren't nearly as genetically identical to their boss in terms of brains. Necks craned.

H.P. nodded and lowered his hand. "It would seem that the Big Wand has crashed, and until it powers up again, or until I give my say-so, we will not be attempting to perform our regular duties."

A couple of light moans sounded from around the crowd, but they died away again.

"It's entirely possible that some sort of emergency could strike us here in our place of refuge while we are down. I want all of us to be prepared to defend ourselves if need be. Our magic will be draining fast, starting with those of you who are younger and haven't come into your full pools yet, but if this goes on, we will all be finding ourselves dangling wings that don't work from our shoulders. I would like every department head to perform a roll call and report back to Longwood."

Longwood half-choked on his own saliva. "All of them, sir?"

"Yes."

"Very well then, sir." Half-wishing he could make a show of dragging his feet while flying, he drifted over to a clearer area and waited as, one by one, the department heads gathered up how many pixies they had beneath their division, counted them off, recounted, and repeated the amount to him so he could jot it down.

It went on.

For a long time.

Longwood wanted to beat his head against the nearest cloudstone wall. He didn't. Regardless, it was days like this that he wished it were Sanderson in the dumb star hat.

But, after twenty-five minutes, Longwood finished marking down the numbers on a stray yellow sticky note (he'd long been forbidden to carry his real notebook for reasons he would never admit to), tallied them up, and paused. He re-tallied. Paused again.

"Including me, H.P., and Finley, that's only five hundred and five. We're missing one." A flashback whipped through his head in excruciating detail as he remembered the last time he'd come up one short and thrown the entire company into a ruffled lock-down. Turns out, he'd forgotten to count himself.

A heavy shadow fell over his body, sending his wings skipping so badly that he dropped down to the bricks. Uncertainly clutching his note, Longwood rotated his eyes upward. Faust peered over his shoulder, then reached forward to tap the marks with a fat finger. "Maybe you'd better count again, Woody."

Again, this time with sweat coursing the creases of his skin. "We're missing one. H.P., we're missing one, sir. I'm sure of it."

"Did you remember to include yourself this time?"

"Yes, sir."

H.P. scratched his cheek, then shrugged with the hand that wasn't holding the nymph. That was helpful. Facing the crowd again, many of whom had begun to drift away towards the fringes, Longwood held up his hands. "All right, everyone. We're going to do this the long way, in birth order."

"Can we go backwards?" someone pleaded from the rear of the crowd. Longwood couldn't tell for certain, but he rather suspected it was Verona.

"I can hardly count you forwards. The last three hundred of you I expect to be mostly guesses. Number one. H.P. is obviously-"

"I'm here."

Longwood mimed scratching that off an imaginary list, then tucked the invisible pen behind his ear and glanced about. "Sanderson?"

No reply. Wings shifted in the crowd.

"Nobody's seen Sanderson? Not a trace? Well, that was simple. That's the good news, however. Unfortunately, sir, this means he's alone." _And getting into trouble_ , Longwood muttered in his head.

H.P. tapped his shoulder. "How do you forget Sanderson? No one forgets Sanderson."

"He _is_ the only one in his entire department, sir, so he had neither anyone to report nor anyone to report to him. In addition to that, he contributes so little to the company and is gone so often, I simply tend to forget he's meant to be here at all."

"I don't pay you for your sass, Longwood."

"It's free of charge, sir." He sent off another text to Sanderson, but eight minutes passed and they didn't get a response.

The Head Pixie shook his head and shifted Finley to the crook of his other arm. "I want us to look for him."

"The power ought to be coming back on soon enough."

"Last time it was four days." H.P. trailed off, touching his fingertips to his cheek.

"I trust he's smart enough to find his own way out, sir." Longwood almost gagged on the words. "He knows proper evacuation procedure."

And he did - it was a requirement for all pixies - but H.P. shook his head. Hard. "He has separation anxiety. If he's not here yet, that concerns me. And, he is merely one pixie. Tracking one down isn't nearly as hard as finding two. It's easy enough to manage, and with that being the case, I would prefer to keep all of you in one location. Is that understood?"

Longwood's neutral frown dipped by a fourth of a millimeter. "Yes, sir. Would you have us use our starpieces to light the way with bright beacons?"

"No. Five hundred and two pixies doing that would rack up far too high a price, and you'll burn the magic from the field sooner. We'll go without."

He was kidding. He had to be kidding more than a pregnant satyr.

"I'm not kidding." H.P. said, giving him a strange sideways look. "You can find him in the near-dark. Given the fact that pixies have pheromones in their blood, it shouldn't be difficult. A shame we can't summon him out here, but you all react to the taste and scent indiscriminately, and especially while _you're_ here, I am not in the mood to deal with a swarm right now."

The vice president bit down hard on his lip. "Yes, sir. Did the rest of you hear that? Sanderson is still inside and H.P. has instructed us to search for him. Without attempting to summon him out with intentionally-released pheromones. I want all of you in pairs so none of you hurt yourselves in the dark. Find your even-odd partner, unless any of you feel strongly about going with someone else. Then you can work it out amongst yourselves. And…"

Longwood studied the pixies before him. As vice president, he could have his pick of any of them, really. Well, almost any. Faust and Newman were rarely seen apart - only when they were trying to outperform one another or Hamilton in some sporty exercise thing that had caught their interest - and the twins would want each other too. No way was he going with Wilcox if he could help it. Which one, which one…?

"Marconi," he decided, "you're to come with me." Marconi's inability to sit still for too long sent him flying up and down the halls frequently, and he likely knew his way around better than most. Besides that, he was on Sanderson's floor and possibly had an idea of what he might have been doing when the power died.

"Yes, sir."

"Assuming the lights don't come back on, we'll meet back outside in two hours. That should be enough time, with so many pixies working together. If no one has found him, we'll search again." Longwood checked this idea with H.P., then nodded when he got the 'okay' signal. "Right. Er. Let's go."

"And no _ping_ ing," H.P. called as they filed inside again. "There's no telling how long the Big Wand will stay down, and I won't have all you punks wasting what remains of your battery chips."

Since most of the others were still searching for their own partners out in the square, Longwood and Marconi had a head start. Their first stop was the second floor, where Sanderson's office was. The door was unlocked, but the room was empty, even when they thoroughly patted and/or kicked at everything. They searched various restrooms by the pale blue glow of their cell phone screens, with no luck there either. Nor on Floor 18, even though it had the C-level hot tub.

"Maybe he's down at the food court?"

He wasn't, but Longwood found his favorite jelly left abandoned on a table by someone who had obeyed the evacuation command. Since no one was watching, he snuck a bite before hurrying after Marconi, who had ducked into the connected kitchens that spanned behind the 'shops' on the southern side.

"Well, he's not back here. Let's head up to Floor 7."

They could hear wings buzzing in the dark as they pushed open the swinging doors. An occasional flash of light. The wings went up in a column- pixies were flying up between the squarish, spiraled stairs, and a whole lot of them. Wanting to avoid bumping someone in the crowd and causing anyone to get hurt, Longwood opted to take the long way by climbing the stairs themselves. He and Marconi floated down the seventh-floor hallway and took a right-hand turn.

"Whoa," shouted a voice. 'A voice' was about as specific as one could get in the middle of Pixie headquarters by the dull light of cell phone screens. The speaker swerved further upwards just in time to avoid slamming face-first into Longwood. A second reacted quickly enough to follow it. The four pixies paused to gather their bearings, wings whirring.

"Still looking, Longwood?"

"No luck. Smitty?"

"Walters. Ralston is with me. We've covered Floors 21 to 24. Watch out for Newman, Hamilton, and Faust. They're taking advantage of the dark."

"Right, thank you." Longwood reached past them and felt at the cold metal of the wall. "Elevator. Let's take it, Marconi."

"Elevator's down. Enjoy the stairs."

"Right."

"Where to?" the younger pixie asked as Longwood found the stairwell door and wrenched it open. This one was far less crowded than the one from the other side of the building.

"I'm not sure. I would assume the first few floors are covered. With those three broad-shouldered hooligans running about, it would be nice to walk along one of the outer halls with windows, but my guess would be that everyone had the same idea."

"I think our best option," Marconi said, rustling his wings, "is to head… down _there_."

Longwood gulped, but only in his head. He was very good at keeping his face expressionless. Probably the best of all the pixies, being vice president and everything. Although it mattered less in the dark. "The Labyrinth? Without light?"

In answer, Marconi swung himself off the stairway rail and flared his wings. While they weren't half as high as they could have been, Longwood had quite awhile to wring his tie and scrub the windows of his mental shields.

"It would make sense that he's down here," Longwood found himself admitting. "This place stretches a mile in every direction, and without Keefe supervising, he could have gotten lost. _We_ could get lost."

The wooden door opened without a creak. Neither of the pixies moved, but stared into the deeper blackness of the storage room. While they couldn't see it, they could feel the yawn of empty space around the elevator and their stairwell entrance. They stood at the exact center point. Sanderson could have wandered in any direction.

"Hold my hand, Marconi. If you get lost down here where the passages wind around, you might starve to death before the power comes back on."

"Are you afraid of losing me, or of getting lost yourself?"

"I don't have to answer that. I'll lead. You keep track of which way we've come so we don't lose the stairs."

They felt their way to the nearest row of filing cabinets, the surfaces a stinging cold beneath their fingertips. "Sanderson," they called intermittently, tapping on metal to make sound. "Sanderson?"

Longwood tried to keep their course straight, but eventually they had to make turns. He kept asking Marconi if he remembered the path back, and after maybe twenty minutes, when the other pixie was growing more hesitant, Longwood decided that they would be best turning around. Obviously, Sanderson wasn't here.

"We could nip our skin until we bleed," he muttered, skimming between cold, hard cabinets.

"H.P. said no pheromones. He doesn't want a swarm."

"Yes, but we seem to be the only pixies down here."

Marconi considered it. "I guess… but you're the… y'know. H.P. doesn't like it when the swarming hormones get into your head. You… tip."

"He doesn't like it when Sanderson's missing, either."

"I suppose that's fair enough. All right. One round of paper wasp pheromones, coming up. Eep!"

After the word 'paper', Longwood had stopped flying forward, and Marconi took a smack in the nose from his wings. "Hold off on that. Oh, duh. We're quite dumb today. This entire time, we've been searching places Sanderson _should_ be. But he's almost never here when we run through evacuation drills, because he's always trotting off with H.P. after some forsaken thing. Text or no text, when it went dark, he may not have even thought to leave the building. It's more likely that he'd curl up somewhere he felt safe. He wasn't in his office, and he's not allowed in the penthouse, so maybe…"

"… The loose paper room?"

"Exactly." When they'd finally returned to the elevator, Longwood pushed the stairwell door open and waved Marconi on with the apex of one wing. "Floor B2, here we go."

They were still at mid-cloudlevel, which meant no windows, which meant darkness. And yet, Longwood was feeling confident - cocky, almost - as he led the way forward, right, and right again. At the end of that last, hidden hall lay a door with a deadbolt on the outside. Unlocked.

Marconi, coming out from behind Longwood with his phone in hand, eased open the door. "Sanderson?"

No reply, at first. But Longwood could sense a slight disturbance in his dim surroundings, like a shift. The shifting came again- someone tentatively wading or outright crunching through thousands of heaps of papers. Discarded contracts. Certificates. Pieces embarrassingly wrinkled, or that had been wet so the ink had run. Things that a species bred for organization and filing had no use for, but couldn't bring themselves to give up, because without a cathartic outlet to be had, their instinct to tear and chew would lead to the destruction of more valuable items of interest. A bit of a panic room, if you would. A dark, shameful panic room that all of them would have difficulty justifying to an outsider.

Sanderson's groping hands came patting in the dark. One fell on Longwood's wrist, then slid up to his shoulder.

"I thought you all left me," the first pixie said. In the blue haze of his phone light, Longwood thought he detected a twitch of emotion in Sanderson's face. His wings fluttered, stirring loose papers, and suddenly his arms were clutching Longwood by the neck, nose buried in his shoulder. " _I thought you all left me_!"

Longwood tried to loosen his grip. "Why didn't you come outside along with everyone else?"

"When did they go outside?"

"Didn't you get the text?"

Flustered- defensive- "I- I have Longwood blocked. My battery was low." He wriggled his fingers in Longwood's mouth. "Who is this?"

"You blocked your vice president? Sanderson, you can't do that. That's a violation of company rules… Oh. Later, perhaps. For now, we'd better let H.P. know we found you." Hoping to rub guilty salt into the wound, Longwood added, "He's had every pixie looking for over an hour."

Sanderson hung his head. Satisfied, Longwood patted him twice hard on the back and let go of him.

Instantly, Sanderson yelped and made a grab for his tie. "Don't! Please don't sneak away! It's been two hours, cold and dark and alone, and I c-can't do this anymore."

Longwood made the attempt to shake Sanderson from his forearm, to no avail. "Come on," he said over his shoulder to Marconi. "Let's head back to the stairs."

Marconi fired off a text – likely alerting the company that Sanderson had been found – and nodded. After unfastening Sanderson's creeping fingers from his throat and letting the trembling, older pixie simply hold his hand, Longwood led the way.

"No one was anywhere," Sanderson said, clinging tighter. "The elevator got stuck somewhere between Floors 5 and 6. I tried to start it again, but something snapped and it plunged all the way down here. The noise was deafening, but _no one came_. No one even wondered."

"You're fine now."

"I-it took all my battery just to get the doors open. I thought I was going to be stuck in there. Singing doesn't solve every problem."

"Well, now we're here for you, and we're going to get you back outside with everybody else." Tugging on his hand, still dragging his free one along the wall, he took a left turn. "I won't let anything happen to you."

Sanderson slipped his arms around his torso, flattening Longwood's wings and forcing him to grit his teeth and drop to the ground. "I hope Longwood doesn't find out about this. He won't let it go."

With an ounce of hesitation, Longwood lay his own arm behind Sanderson's neck, sort of like he sometimes did to Naelita. "I think he'll understand. He probably wishes the both of you could simply get along. Now, you're squeezing my wings. If you could just-?"

As soon as the words left his lips, the lights jolted overhead. They came on. Went dark. Then they flickered on again and held. Longwood stared down at Sanderson, who stared back up at him with a yale-in-the-headlights-look. Clumsy hands on both sides fumbled to shove the other away from the sort of half-hug between gyne and drone. What absolutely terrible timing.

"Erm," Sanderson said, straightening his tie with a single swift jerk, "I'd better check in with H.P."

"I suppose you'd better."

Sanderson zipped off towards the stairs without a word of thanks.

Longwood's cell phone _ping_ ed with a text. He flipped it open and read _, Fixed the generator! You're welcome! :)_ from Thane.

"'Don't worry, Sanderson, I won't let anything happen to you'. 'Longwood wishes you two could each lay aside the old rumors and your jealousy and be the best of friends'." Marconi nudged Longwood between the ribs with his elbow as he replaced the phone in the inner pocket of his jacket. "So, about you despising him for not ever really contributing to the company…"

"What's this here on your collar?" Longwood asked. On automatic, Marconi tilted his head down to see, and Longwood brought his finger up so it both smacked his chin and flipped his shades off. "Unless you want your pay docked, we don't speak of this to anybody."


	17. (18) Blame

_Summary:_ Young Flappy Bob is in the police station. Again. Maybe it's time he stopped rebelling against the spray bottles and accepted them instead.

 _Characters:_ Flappy Bob

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Refusal" / "Whatever"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **18\. Blame** (Pre-series)

 _Year of Leaves; Spring of the Aging Fern_

* * *

The boy had turned eighteen years old today, but the clown make-up on his face made him look sixteen, fourteen, or maybe even twelve in the wobbly wooden chair. Or the boy himself thought as much, at least, because Officer Snaps made him stare into his weird magenta eyes in the one-way mirror for ten minutes, leaning back in his seat and bumping his head over and over against the wall, before he and the smaller woman who'd never spoken to him even bothered to show up in the chilly interrogation room. It was always Officer Snaps. Never Officer Green, or Winslow, or Rain (he liked Officer Rain).

"Robert Ferguson."

The boy dipped his head without straightening up. The one leg that wasn't hooked around the horizontal bar between the chair feet pedaled in a circle like he were riding a unicycle. "Hello, Officer Snaps. I really hope your day's been going better than mine. But that probably isn't hard."

"Given why you're here again, I'm sure it isn't." After shutting the door, Officer Snaps clattered down his mug (more orange juice, probably) and took his chair where it stood about two yards in front of Robert. The small woman sat down on the other side of the desk. They both spared her a passing glance before Officer Snaps said, "Happy birthday. I brought you a cupcake. Last time you were in, you mentioned chocolate was your favorite, right?"

A soft ringing sound and a ripple of air behind him warned him otherwise. Robert turned around, studied the floating seltzer bottle behind him, then decided that it was his birthday and he didn't care, and that the bottle was too much of a coward to do that much damage to him. He took the offered cupcake.

"Thank you."

A spurt of water soaked the back of his neck. Officer Snaps and the woman lifted their heads and frowned at the empty space about a foot too far to Robert's left (as people often tended to). The bottle sprayed Robert again as he peeled the wrapper off his cupcake.

"Screw off," he muttered through a mouthful of soft pastry. "I'm not in the mood today."

"Did you say something?"

"Me? I was just about to ask if you said something, sir." Licking a couple crumbs from his lips, Robert made a vague swirling motion on his left side. "Sounds like there's some coins rattling around in the air conditioner or something. You should get that looked at."

Officer Snaps didn't smile, even though his dark eyes said that he really wanted to. He pushed back his short black hair and squeaked his chair a bit closer. "You know the drill, Robert. I'm going to ask you some questions."

"Go ahead. I'm not hiding anything. In fact, I'm excited to prove it." He rolled the cupcake wrapper up and set it on the edge of the table. The seltzer bottle gave him a final defiant squirt near his waistline and disappeared with a disgusted twinkling noise. Robert smiled into the remains of his treat. In a silent room with an attentive witness, it wouldn't dare. Perhaps it had just remembered the one-way mirror.

"Huh," said the small woman, cocking her head.

"Where were you on Thursday night?" Officer Snaps asked.

"I was down at the cemetery. Looking for… stuff."

"What sort of stuff would that be?"

He squirmed his shoulders. The chair came back down on all four feet. "I don't know. Just lost things. Lots of weird, random lost things turn up at the creek behind the cemetery if you know where to look. The one that trickles down from the reservoir behind the dam? You can find cool volcanic rocks there, and sometimes hats or camera cases and stuff. I always carry a garbage bag and clean up litter while I'm out. I go there all the time. Everybody knows it. It's not really a surprise. I like coins. Sometimes when it's a good day I'll find some of those."

Officer Snaps tapped a finger to the side of his nose. "How's that Canadian penny and state quarter collection of yours going?"

Stopping the squirming, Robert just lowered his eyes. "Pretty good, actually. Thanks for asking."

"Do you have any of those on you now? I'd like to see what's new."

"You guys searched me when I came in and took all my stuff." All the stuff that wasn't in his secret pockets.

"Right. That we did. Go on."

Robert shrugged. "And that's it."

"Hm. Are you always alone when you're out wandering?"

"Usually. Depends. Sometimes the cats or dogs follow me. Denzel has a new golden retriever puppy." Just to mess with the officer's head, he added, "This one time he ran into the park where I was lying on the grass, and while we were wrestling and playing around, I fell asleep and he sat up and talked, and he told me that he's a magical fairy who killed somebody dishonorably in a war, and he ended up getting cursed in the body of a magical dog. Apparently that's a big deal, because usually magical dogs just switch bodies with someone they catch telling a lie or disobeying authority figures or something. He's a good friend. Fluffy animals are neat. They're cute and I love them." His hand crept towards the empty pocket where he usually kept his brightly-colored balloons.

After he finished jotting down a note, the big man plucked a photograph from a manila file folder and slid it down the table on Robert's right. "Do you know who this is?"

Robert spared the picture only a single glance before riveting his eyes on the bulletin board behind the quiet woman. "That's Kyle Garner. He goes to high school with me. Or he… did."

"Yes. When did you last see him?"

"Thursday night. About five minutes before I went into the cemetery."

"Why did you choose to go into the cemetery that day, exactly?"

"To cut through it to the creek. I just like it there. I like how it's always quiet. I like feeling the soft grass. I like looking to see who's gotten flowers this week and whose place needs a cleaning. I like walking around without people staring at me. I like having the space to be myself. I like reading all the names on the headstones and looking to see if anybody has one close to mine, or who's related to the people here in your town. And, clowns are funny, so being there instantly makes me a drop-dead knock-out."

Officer Snap's mouth twitched in a slight smile, then disappeared. He held his hands clasped on the edge of the desk. "What did Kyle say to you?"

Robert raised his eyes. "I didn't do anything to him."

"I wasn't trying to imply that something he said provoked you."

"Sure."

"Please, what did he say to you? Can you tell me that, at least? You'd be helping our case a lot."

Like they didn't all suspect that he was behind it. He and some gang, probably. Robert twisted his tongue around his teeth. "He just called me some rude names while we were passing each other on the sidewalk, like guys do. No biggy."

"What names, exactly?"

"Nothing important," mumbled the boy.

Officer Snaps let out a long, steamy sigh through his nostrils. He took up his mug again. "Robert, please. This isn't the first time we've gone over this."

Robert hesitated, his lips parted but his teeth still set together. "He… he just told me I was a gutter-crawler and I'd never amount to anything. He was just joking. And when he bumped me I lost my footing and tripped and slammed my head into that fence around the Davenport place. So that's why I have the dent up here in my forehead. He told me that make-up was for girls and I was about to be eighteen and that if I was a real man I'd fight him. We were just messing around- I didn't do or say anything. I didn't touch him."

"I see. You wouldn't have wanted to hurt him. You just had a momentary loss of control. And then what happened?"

"Nothing. I walked away."

"That's it?"

"Yes. _Sir_ ," he added at the end before he could be corrected. Dodged a rubber bullet there.

Officer Snaps leaned towards the door and murmured for the small woman to pass the tissue box. She did. Robert stared at it without taking any. Was he crying? Was that why this had been offered to him? He didn't feel like he was crying.

"You know, you never told me. Why do you want to be a clown, Robert?"

He slid his eyes to the right, trying to draw up the memory. "I just… always have."

"How would you describe yourself and your abilities?"

"I've been able to ride a bike and a unicycle for as long as I can remember. I like balloon animals. Juggling makes me happy. I can run across tight-ropes. It's in my blood."

The hairs began to lift all along his spine, like his neck had just been rubbed hard with one of those same balloons. He waited for the inevitable dinging noise. It turned out to be less inevitable than he'd anticipated.

Officer Snaps nodded. "I used to do a bit of juggling myself. Do you ever go out and do those things with your friends?"

"I don't have friends. I've just learned to recognize some people."

"Such as?"

He listed a few, and stopped when he remembered what had become of most of them. Officer Snaps scratched his cheek, then laced his fingers beneath his chin again.

"You wouldn't want to hurt them, of course. Accidents happen."

Robert pointed to the quiet woman in the corner. "Shouldn't trying to trick me into incriminating myself be the detective's job? Not the interrogator's?"

Officer Snaps upturned his hands in her direction and muttered, "Why does everyone always ask me that?"

"Smart clown," Robert said, leaning back in his chair.

"All right, then. Seth Copperfield. Dead. Catherine Caroler. Dead. Darrel Underwood. Dead. Witnesses and security cameras claim that you were in the area all four times, minutes before some absurd and timely accident befell them. Always after they talked to you. Called you a name or pushed you in the mud or something of the sort." Officer Snaps leaned back in his seat after throwing down each of the file folders individually. "Update me about your home life, kid."

"Why? It's already in that file you were reading in the hallway when Officer Rain walked me past."

"Yes, it is. Let's see if I can remember the key details without looking." He put up his fingers as he counted. "Showed up at the orphanage when you were six or seven months old. Not even on the doorstep, just in the middle of Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright's office, swaddled in a gray blanket and gasping like you'd been deprived of oxygen for a day. In and out of foster families since your eighth birthday. Finally ran away from one of them at the age of eleven. Got Beatrice _and_ Abby Gale pregnant in the same night. Ah, you jumped. You weren't informed until now, were you? Well, you'll be a father of two in another four months. Congratulations. For the last three years you've been running around the hills from here to Brightburg and stolen for a living. Did I forget anything?"

"I don't steal things."

Officer Snaps drank the rest of his orange juice. "How'd you get the money to buy that fancy suit and tie, Robert?"

The boy bit his lip. His left palm lay hot and sweaty on his knees. His right hand still cradled the last few crumbs of his cupcake, which would probably be going uneaten now. "My benefactor gave it to me."

"This would be your alleged mad scientist benefactor, I presume?"

"I'm not the one who said he was a mad scientist. Pamela did, and she doesn't know. She just reads too many conspiracy theories and makes stuff up for attention."

Frowning, Officer Snaps glanced at the silent woman with her yellow pad. She ducked her head. "Well, it's admittedly a relief to know that your mad scientist story isn't real after all."

"I- I don't know about that part. I don't know anything about mad scientists. I don't read a lot of _Frankenstein_ books. But my benefactor's totally real. He sends me a letter every year on my birthday."

Officer Snaps quirked up one brow. "Does he? Then have you gotten one today?"

"Well… no. Not yet, which is kind of weird, but usually I don't spend my whole birthday stuck in a police station full of-"

"Idiots?"

He'd been going to say 'witnesses', but changed his mind and nodded and said, "Yes, sir". Officer Snaps scratched his clean-shaven chin and stared down at his file folder without flipping any of the papers therein.

"But there's still tonight, so…" Robert reached for the inner left pocket of his jacket and began to grope. "L-look, I have most of the other seventeen letters. They're never anything meaningful. They're just weird stuff. He always talks about himself and sometimes it's creepy and annoying. But I get what I get and I'm okay with it. I know he's real, and I know he's watching out for me. Look, it's always the same handwriting, perfect like a typeset. And it really says he's my benefactor, see?"

His fingers closed on empty air.

"Oh. Right. I… lost those months ago." All he had was that faded photograph of his clowny birth parents. They'd let him keep that.

They talked a few minutes more, but Officer Snaps at last stood and motioned for Robert to head towards the door. "Come on, kid. I'll walk you out, and you're free to skip about wherever you want until you get yourself in indisputable trouble with the law."

"Really? Just like that? You're not going to drag me back to the orphanage?"

Officer Snap's gaze was steely as they moved off down the hallway. The lady (who had finally ordered him to stop juggling the broken wheels on Officer Snap's chair in a voice that could have chiseled stone) switched off the lights behind them. "You're eighteen. We can't do anything until you commit a crime."

Robert whistled and crossed his arms behind his back. "Wow. That must be really, really annoying for you."

"It's not that annoying. We all know you weren't behind Garner's death. Sometimes, hot air balloons just crash. But if you hear any leads, you know where to find us. Happy birthday, kiddo."

He was shooed off like a dog into the evening. As soon as the door shut, not one, not two, but three seltzer bottles materialized in the air in front of him with a bright noise and shocked his skin with the coldest water he'd felt in a long while.

"Yeah, yeah, I know you're upset about the cupcake," he said, living up to his name and flapping them away. They regrouped like hornets, staring him down, before vanishing with a sort of _zip_ of into nothingness. The blocky white hole they'd punched in the fabric of space sealed itself up behind them, and though he wrinkled his lips, he didn't think much more about them as he slouch-walked his way down the street. He'd been thoroughly hosed down as soon as he'd stumbled away from Beatrice that night (Well, stumbled away from Abby- Beatrice had been first, if his favorite). Dumped in the middle of the road, stripped of his suit, and nothing to eat. And when he found a discarded box of half-eaten Chinese take-out in the gutter, it had _ping_ ed into oblivion out of spite. Cold, hungry, wet, he'd spent the night without any sort of comforts and gotten sick. The magic touch had been taken away from him, until after three days of sneezing and moaning he was sent a blanket and thermos of warm milk almost in reluctant apology.

After eighteen years, Robert was used to it all, as he ought to have been- everybody had secret seltzer bottles. And after making multiple faux pas, he'd finally picked up enough social cues to learn that people's temptations and embarrassing screw-ups weren't the sort of thing one really ought to discuss in public. And if the police had never asked, good for them.

As he lingered at the end of a sidewalk, waiting for the stoplight to shift colors, a cheerful voice rang out in his general direction. He ignored it, until it came again. His eyes slid left. From across the other street, Tad Turner bounced on his heels and waved to him.

"Hey, clown kid! Want to walk with me to the store? I'm going to buy a pineapple and a meatloaf. And you can come to my house and eat my cereal and play my video games, if you want."

Incredulous, Robert stared back. You did not bully the clown kid, especially if you were really mean. You did not befriend the clown kid, especially if you were really fun. Those who did either one despite the warnings tended to disappear without a trace.

But Tad Turner didn't care. He was sixteen, lived out in the woods with his scatterbrained and borderline-abusive father, had been in and out of therapy ever since third grade when he tried to convince the entire town that sweet little Sheldon Dinkleberg was training his lawn gnomes to spy on him and steal his shampoo and whisper through the cracks in the walls, had dropped out of elementary school the year he'd lost his mom, and he apparently didn't care about a lot of things anymore. Once again he waved to Robert, and smiled that stupid smile that said his brain had been a million miles away for the last decade and wasn't planning to wander back within his lifetime.

"I'd… I'd love to come over and play with you, Tad."

With a _ping_ , one of his seltzers materialized behind him and sprayed some even icier water all down the back of his neck. Streaks of it dribbled down his collar. They even bled into his underpants. A warning. _Remember Kyle_ , they said. This time, Robert winced.

"Ooh, actually, I just remembered that I can't."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Just because." Also, he was hungry, and couldn't risk pushing the envelope any further tonight.

Tad looked dejected for all of two seconds, then nodded and trotted off on his own, humming something off-key. Robert raised his eyebrows. Several… several degrees off-key.

The light changed. He crossed the road. Three minutes passed. He picked up a stray branch and bumped it along the fence in front of the Buxaplenty's yard. Left street. Right street. Straight for a couple blocks. A few turns later, he hopped the fence around the cemetery and tracked down one of the grave markers that read 'Ferguson'.

Whoever was buried there, it wasn't anyone he was descended from. Or if they were, they wouldn't have known him- Harley and Agnes Ferguson had died in 1903 and 1907. Still, they were the family he had, and he would defend them to his final breath.

After plucking up a stray weed he hadn't bothered to yank out the last time he was here, Robert knelt down in the grass nearby and clapped his hands. Forty-five seconds passed, and nothing happened.

He clapped again, glancing left and right. Maybe he'd missed the window of opportunity. Maybe he'd seriously ticked off the gods with the cupcake stunt.

Then a platter of oatmeal, tofu, soy cubes, a bagel, an unbuttered roll, a handful of animal crackers, and a glass of water without ice materialized with a _ping_. The same sort of food he always got, even when he dug in dumpsters or filled his plate with something else. It always changed. Three meals a day. Always. Would've made a fine party trick, except it only worked when no one else was around, and if it wasn't too late at night. He'd tried to show people before, too, but the food always disappeared when he did, or if he pulled out a camera. Most nights, he'd get another spray in the face and would go to bed hungry. Eventually he'd learned The Rules: The Powers-That-Be would keep him fed and clothed and safe, so long as he kept their secret and obeyed the spray bottle. Tonight, Robert thanked his benefactor aloud and tucked in.

Just as he was finishing up, a last _ping_ signaled a late arrival to his meal: one plain vanilla cupcake lacking frosting, and one letter with his name scrawled across the back in stiff and perfect letters. Robert felt his shoulders sag in relief. Usually, he got the birthday treat for breakfast. Police station aside, he'd been wondering all day if his benefactor had forgotten. Whoever and wherever he may be.

Licking his lips, he took up the crisp white envelope and slid his thumbnail beneath the fold. "'September 19th, 1965', addressed to 'Dear Flappy Bob'," he guessed aloud, and opened it with excruciating care.


	18. (28) Solo

_Summary:_ H.P., Sanderson, and several other pixies are giving young Rosencrantz a test when Gary and Betty cry for help. From… Florida?

 _Characters:_ Sanderson, Rosencrantz, Gary, Betty, H.P., Longwood, assorted pixies

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Respect Your Elders" / "Minion"

 _Prerequisites:_ "Excitement"; this piece picks up from where my 'fic _Pink and Gray_ ended

* * *

 **28\. Solo** ("Baby Face")

 _Year of Leaves; Spring of the Last Berry_

* * *

Sanderson didn't look up from his desk when the door slammed open against the wall, but he did when a low pixie voiced choked itself in a sob and a tiny body dropped to the floor. The culprit didn't even have his millenium wings yet, so he could only be Verona or Rosencrantz, and crossing size with blatant emotion with what was about to happen gave him all the clues he needed.

He lay his pen aside. "Rosencrantz, you shouldn't be here. Your assessment starts in eight minutes and I'm supposed to participate in the proctoring of this one."

"I can't do it!" Rosencrantz scraped his fingers down the wall in search of peeling paper. "I can't do this again!"

As he seemed to be doing more and more often these days, Sanderson temporarily abandoned his no-hugs policy in the face of tiny wet eyes. He drifted over from his desk and lay one hand on Rosencrantz's shoulder. "Shh. Shh. You need to quiet down before word of this gets back to H.P. You don't want him to go into this with preconceived notions."

"B-b-but- b-b-but it's call a-answering training. I have to get the ph-ph-phone and solve problems by m-myself. Real problems from real cl-cl-clients. I might say the wrong thing, or send them to the wr-wrong pixie, and they might get h-hurt, and I'll get f-fired again, and they'll be hurt- and- if I fail, I have to go work in laundry until H.P. lets me take the test again next century. I can't go back to laundry, Sanderson. I can't take it anymore. Or worse." He leaned against Sanderson so his soft lips brushed his ear. "He'll make me carry. Letters."

"We never should have let Longwood take you to meet Shakespeare. Or at least not allowed the man to name a character who faces betrayal from a childhood friend and dies just because he was delivering messages after you." Sanderson picked the tiny, shivering pixie up and held him to his chest. He'd expected a breakdown of sorts to occur; he had mentored Rosencrantz himself, back before he'd failed his first century assessment, and his second, and his ninth. As Rosencrantz slipped both fists into his mouth, he said, "I think you need to hear a secret."

"Is it the secret about Longwood's biggest weakness being when he has to look at blood and things?"

"No."

"Is it the secret about the time you walked into Longwood's office and found him kissing that selkie girl and he threatened to have you demoted if you told and then you told anyway and H.P. made you hold hands and then he magicked your fingers to stick together until you two could get along and you stayed like that for the entire week?"

"Not quite."

"Is it the one about when Longwood snuck off to go see James Madis-"

"It's not a Longwood secret." Sanderson mussed up Rosencrantz's hair into a tuft, then rubbed it flat again. "You're not going to fail this part of your exam. I rigged the test this time. You only need to answer the first ten calls, and I wrote to ten goodly Fairies who all agreed to ring in and ask for simple requests. Very easy. None of the emergencies are real. It's exactly like when you were only a hundred and we used to practice responding to letters. You're going to be fine."

Rosencrantz's whimpers trickled off. Sanderson removed his shades and dabbed the pixie's eyes with one sleeve, then returned him to the floor. "Fly on down to Room 1C. The rest of us will be there in five minutes. Just keep your calm, remember to be polite, and you'll do fine. You only need two hundred points."

"Okay…"

Four minutes later, Sanderson gathered with the other proctors of the exam - Hawkins, Wilcox, Longwood, and the Head Pixie himself - outside the door.

"You all have your clipboards and two pens at the ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"I expect you all to be as objective as possible. Is that understood? Hawkins? Sanderson? There will be trouble if I see any more 'At least he tried's. We're not cutting him slack because he's already failed nine times."

They both nodded. Longwood tugged at one tight sleeve of that fluffy brown jacket of his, plainly reveling in the fact that H.P. hadn't said his name.

"And Longwood?"

"Sir?"

"You have a lipstick stain smeared beside your ear that wasn't there before Naelita Sorins went up to your office. I've noticed she's been visiting quite often lately, and less and less often when you go on break."

Longwood's face turned gumball pink beneath the dozens of red freckles that identified him as a gyne rather than a drone. His fingers went straight for the spot on his cheek. "I'm sorry, sir."

"That's twice I've had enough proof to call you on it now. Three strikes and you're out. If this happens again, I want your cap on my desk, and Smith will rise to his gyne duties and replace you as company vice president. After we finish here today, you can report to evening dish duty for two months as you did before."

"Yes, sir. Thank you for not firing me. I'll clean myself up better next time."

H.P. raised one eyebrow. Sanderson kicked his ankle, because he could get away with it.

"I- I mean, I won't do it again (Watch your fat toe, lug)."

"Do what?"

"I, erm, I won't sneak smooches during work hours, sir."

Sanderson whistled a few bars of "Kiss the Girl" from Disney's "The Little Mermaid" as H.P. looked him up and down. "I suppose that's the most compromise I'm going to get out of you. If you ever wonder why you aren't allowed to leave Pixie World unsupervised anymore, this is why."

"That's… that's perhaps for the best, sir."

"How am _I_ doing, boss?" Wilcox asked. H.P. stared at him for a moment, rubbing his chin, then gave him a thumbs up. Wilcox brightened. Hawkins patted his shoulder with his bad hand, and Sanderson mimicked the thumbs up once the boss's back was turned.

H.P. opened the door. The room was small, with a desk and chair set solidly on the tile. A window into the observing room spanned the back wall. Arranged neatly on the desk were one landline phone, one pad of green sticky notes, his starpiece, a wrinkled purple pamphlet that listed each pixie's name, job title, and room number, and about a dozen blue and black pens. Rosencrantz sprang from the chair as soon as the door opened, holding his arms straight by his sides.

"Sir."

"Good afternoon, Rosencrantz. The time is 1:00. You will now be entering the fifth and final day of your assessment. Today you will be answering calls from clients and, if necessary, directing them to whomever you believe can be of best assistance to them. You may use the provided pamphlet, but no other notes or reference materials you may have written. You must take ten calls, and are expected to remain in the exam room until you do. You may contact any pixie for anything you need to complete your tasks. However, you cannot ask for advice on _how_ a call should be answered. When you are finished, you must demonstrate the proper exit procedure as though you were going on break, after which you may leave the room and wait while we tally up your score. Are there any questions?"

"No, sir." Unsurprising. Rosencrantz had run through this test so many times, he probably had the opening speech memorized as well as H.P. did.

H.P. flipped the wall switch to redirect all incoming calls to Room 1C. "You may begin."

On that signal, he and the others floated (Longwood walked) through the room's rear door and took their seats in the floating chairs behind the window. H.P. sat down in the centermost one, removed his glasses, and massaged his temples.

"Twelve pens. He's nervous. The utmost he can pull out of this now is a two hundred and forty-nine."

Sanderson and Longwood dared one another with their eyes to take the place on H.P.'s right, and finally Sanderson bit his tongue and took the left seat instead. Wilcox melted into his typical violet rabbit form and sprang into the chair beside him, still positively beaming from his thumbs up.

 _He'll do fine_ , Sanderson reminded himself. _This is the century he leaves the laundry behind for good_. And then maybe they could all start being sent up the same amount of shirts and ties they sent down.

Rosencrantz settled at his desk, his back to them, the bases of his wrists resting on wood. His shoulders lifted as he took in an unneeded breath. His wings folded themselves flat to his back, then rearranged their order. The clock on the wall ticked. Ticked. Ticked.

The phone beeped after three painful minutes, startling Rosencrantz's hands into the air. He made a grab for it, missed, made a second grab, flipped the entire landline off his desk, and snagged it by the spiral cord before it could smash against the ground.

"I'm sure he can recover from that," Hawkins said, and H.P. shot a look down the table. Rosencrantz panted for just a second, then pressed a button on the landline.

"We're Pixies, Rosencrantz speaking; how may I help you?"

At least he'd given the proper response. Sanderson would have to dock him for the scramble, of course, but no matter what else happened, he couldn't score less than a one. For Rosencrantz, that was considered good news.

"This is Imogen Netter. I was planning to check in with a former godkid of mine, Kylie Taylor, and I wondered if you could tell me where she's living now."

"I don't know, but I can find out for you from our files in just a moment. I'm going to put you on hold." He did.

"Hmm." H.P. marked something across his paper. Sanderson didn't have to look to know; Rosencrantz had forgotten to ask first if the speaker was prepared to be put on hold. Thankfully, the little pixie was no longer his intern and his performance didn't necessarily reflect back on him. The entire company understood these days that Rosencrantz was simply a near-hopeless cause.

Rosencrantz double-checked that he had the correct room number, then tapped at the phone again. _Beep_. "Keefe, I need a search on Kylie Taylor's present location."

A clicking of typing keys. "Is this Rosencrantz?"

"Yes." He listened to Keefe's response, then thanked him and relayed the address to Imogen.

"Thank you very much."

"You're very welcome. Ms. Netter." End Call 1. Sanderson chewed his lip, then gave him three points out of five. H.P. gave him two.

Almost as soon as the phone had gone down, it beeped again. Rosencrantz hit the button. "We're Pixies, Rosencrantz speaking; how may I help you?"

"Hi, I'm from Fairly Accurate News, and I'm following up on an advertisement request your company put in regarding Wish Fixers? There were some details that needed to be double-checked before my godchild called me away, and I was told it would be best if I called back when I was more readily available."

"All right, thank you for doing that. I'm going to connect you through to Cowan in marketing. And your name was?"

"Sue Symmons. Thank you for your help, Rosencrantz."

"Not a problem, Ms. Symmons."

Over the next fifteen minutes, Rosencrantz took calls from Lewis Ticker, Florensa Cosma, and Sage Payworth. They kept their requests simple, and Rosencrantz began pulling 5s. _He'll make it_ , Sanderson thought, running his eyes down his column as Rosencrantz exchanged good-byes with Terry Rivercourse. _If he keeps this up, he'll make it_.

The next call opened with a scream that sent every hair across every arm on high alert.

"Um… W-we're Pixies, Rosencrantz speaking; how may I help you?"

"Rosencrantz? Rosie, is that you? Hey, I don't think I've seen you since I was thirteen and you came to my birthday party at the skate park."

Sanderson's pen slipped from his fingers and clicked against the tile.

"I still have that lamp you gave me back on my dresser at home, actually. How are you?"

"Garrett Cabrera, now is not the time!"

Sanderson stuck his second knuckle in his mouth and bit down. All four of the other pixies glanced at him, then averted their eyes back to the window. As he dropped from his floating chair to retrieve the pen, Sanderson's thoughts whipped back and forth like a banner. He knew those voices. Quite well, in fact. And they were voices that definitely weren't supposed to be calling the direct company line.

"Right, right. Rosebud, it's Gary. From the Learn-A-Torium? Betty's here with me too. We've got a situat - Watch that branch! - situation going on, and you have to patch me through to Mr. Sanderson _right now!"_

Rosencrantz looked over his shoulder at the window, didn't seem to like what he saw, and returned his attention to the phone. His fingernails curled into the wood of the desk.

"M-Mr. Sanderson is currently unavailable. May I take a message?"

"No, that won't help! I need to talk to him. I called him twice already, but he didn't pick up. He _never_ doesn't pick up. Wherever he is, you need to get him on the line. This is an emergency!"

" _On your right, Gary!_ Don't stop!"

"Oh, _smoof!_ Nice hawk eyes, Betty! I didn't even see that one!"

Sanderson tried to keep the tip of his pen hovering over his clipboard where it was supposed to. His starpiece had been left back in his office per H.P.'s orders so he couldn't use it to interfere with Rosencrantz's test. All company calls were supposed to redirect to Room 1C. He hadn't expected a private one like this getting in the way of his careful scheme.

"So, wh-when can we expect him to be available, Rosie?"

Rosencrantz's right hand trembled above the phone. "Um… Not until you stop calling? I'm pretending to be the only pixie here right now."

Wilcox pulled his long black ears over his eyes. "That's it. He's not coming back from that one."

"Oh, give me that. Give me the phone, Gary!" There was a fumble amid splashing footfalls, and then Betty's sweet voice replaced Gary's frantic jabber. "Rosencrantz, this is no time to mess around. We need Sanderson. We have no idea where we are, but we're in a swamp and being chased by about seven alligators right now. Crocodiles?"

"Gators. Gators have teeth sticking out both bottom and tOP IT ALMOST BIT ME DID YOU SEE THAT BETTY THIS PLACE IS THE PURE OPPOSITE OF SAFE!"

"We're up to our waists in hot water poured inside a pickle here! Can you help us, Rose?"

H.P. clicked his pen and leaned forward, one hand curled on his chin and left cheek. "Oh yes, Rosencrantz. Can you?"

Sanderson swallowed.

"U-um. Um." Rosencrantz flipped through his pamphlet. "What… what exactly do you need?"

First there was a scream, followed by, "We really just need to get back to Dimmsdale, thank you. Think you can manage that for us?"

"It was a godkid- tell him that! We found another fairy godkid! We were _poof_ ed, not _ping_ ed. You felt it, right? How hot and stuffy it was, not all warm and calm and comforting?"

"We just need to get home."

Rosencrantz stared down at the reference pamphlet in silence, and Sanderson knew why. There was no such person in charge of a Department of Teleportation or anything like that. Normally, a request like this one could be considered a complaint and really would be forwarded to Sanderson. But Sanderson wasn't in his office. Rosencrantz would have to figure something out on his own.

"Like, _now_ , Rosebud! I AM LITERALLY UP A TREE AND THIS GATOR LOOKS LIKE HE WANTS TO CLIMB AFTER ME EVEN THOUGH HE'S SUPER-DUPER FAT AND I REALLY DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHY HE'S SUPER-DUPER FAT!"

This wasn't in the plan.

Betty's hand muffled the phone. "Gary, yelling at him won't do any good." Her fingers moved away again. Creaking branches. "Rosie? You still there?"

"I… I… I'm trying! I have my starpiece, but I can't _ping_ you anywhere if I don't know where you are first!"

Sanderson could see it now. Both teenagers were tattered and panting, but temporarily out of immediate danger. While alligators circled below, Gary would be clinging upside-down to a thick branch with all four of his limbs. Then Betty was beside him, leaning her head back against the trunk, her knees pulled up to her chest and eyes closed. He could hear the whimper bobbing in her throat as she tried to force down her anxiety. It wouldn't take much more to trigger one of her attacks. She said, "Okay. Okay. Rosie, you've gotta listen to me now. I've been patient, I've played your little game, but you're only nine by our standards, sweetheart. We need a grown-up's help with this."

"I-I'm going to put you on hold while I talk to somebody." For a few silent seconds after he pressed the button, Rosencrantz simply hugged himself and beat his wings. Then he pushed two more buttons and waited for the beep. _Beep_. "Madigan, I have a question. Um. Where do alligators live?"

"Oh," murmured H.P., "I see where this is going."

Fingers flew across Madigan's keyboard like ricocheting hail. "Alligators. Alligators. Let's see… Alligators are found in the southeast United States. Mostly Florida, but sometimes they can also be found in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and so on. Does that help you, Rose? This is Rose, right?"

Rosencrantz nodded, then remembered that Madigan couldn't see him and said, "Thanks". He returned to Betty's line. "So, alligators live in mostly Florida. Are you in Florida?"

"Are we in Florida, Gare-Bear?"

"Do you want me to ask the _thirteen gators trying to snap off my knees for directions_?"

Betty cleared her throat. "Is Sanderson almost out of his meeting, Rosie?"

"Erm, S-Sanderson's not in a meeting. He's here with me, he's just… he's just not going to talk to you right now."

Oh, that wasn't fair. Sanderson looked sideways at H.P., who flicked his lidded eyes to him for half a second.

"He's not _WHAT_?" Betty's screech crackled with thundering static. Sanderson swore he saw the lights flicker overhead. "Mr. Sanderson, I know you can hear me! Please… Please…" On came the first wave of sobs, dribbling between her curled fingers. "Nineteen's too young to die! I h-haven't gone to prom, I haven't kissed more than one boy, I haven't r-recorded my first album. My little b-brother's birthday is next week. I can't die bef-f-fore that."

Sanderson fidgeted with the cap of his pen. "Sir?"

"Please don't interfere with the exam, Sanderson."

"I-it's not like that! I'm taking my placement test right now and Sanderson is watching me. I've almost passed it this time. Really, I have! I can't stop now!"

Gary's voice- "What's more important? Your career or our lives? You're immortal. You'll have another chance. Oh, Betty. Betty, please stay calm- you have to breathe."

"Mr. Sanderson, you c-c-can't leave us here to be eaten just because of some placement test. We need you. We signed a contract! You're supposed to be our guardian a-angel. But you're not. Did you st-string us along, abandon us, and dump us on Rosencrantz as soon as you grew tired of playing with our lives? I actually believed we m-mattered to you. Thanks a lot for restoring my faith in the world just to crush it between your thumb and forefinger. And thanks a lot too, Rosie. You've just k-killed us both. But at least 'you tried'."

 _"Sir?"_

H.P. put a finger to his lips. Rosencrantz covered his ears. "I c-can't do this anymore! You're not real! This isn't a real emergency! Go away!"

This definitely wasn't in the plan.

"Betty? He's… he's really not coming for us?"

"He would have if he were going to." Deep breath. Second breath. "This is how it ends. We're going to die in Florida, Gary, e-eaten by alligators, and no one who matters is ever going to know. Mr. Sanderson? I hope you choke on your own bling. Preferably while eating from _the massive secret c-candy stash you keep down in the 'Caudwell' drawer in the filing room and plan to blame on Mr. Longwood, just in case there's anyone else listening to this_."

As Longwood leaned forward to stare past H.P. over his shades, Sanderson put on his best, _Who me? Pah, she's nuts!_ look. In the exam room, Rosencrantz slid from his chair, hovering a teaspoon's worth of inches above the floor. His chin and hands rested on the desk.

"We needed you, Sanderson. I th-thought I could trust you. I shouldn't have (hic) shouldn't have let you stop me from s-scratching up my arms. S-sorry I made you waste your time on me for t-ten years. Any last words for Mr. Sanderson, Gary? … Gary? Oh my- _GARY_!"

Her voice cut off before she finished calling his name. Rosencrantz stared, flew to one corner of the room, then another, and finally zoomed up to the window separating him from the other pixies. Salty tears had welled up in his eyes. They leaked out from beneath his shades in pairs. He pounded on the glass with his fists, pointing backwards at the dead phone on the desk. "Stop the test," Sanderson said, rising to his wings.

"Sit down, Sanderson. You're still proctoring."

He did, bristling regardless. "I've had enough, boss. Rosencrantz has as good as failed. Two of my charges are in real danger. They aren't thinking clearly, they're under the impression that I abandoned them, and they will turn against us and possibly turn Flappy Bob with them if we don't set the record straight. Stop the test."

"We have to see how he does without us-"

" _Dang it_ , Wilcox!" He knocked the clipboard out of his paws, startling Wilcox back into pixie form. The board went skidding over the floor and bumped into the wall. "Real life is not like 'Finding Nemo'. For the last half hour, we've done nothing _but_ watch what he does without us, and it's pathetic." So saying, Sanderson slid from his chair to his feet, because they let him march to the door the way his wings did not. "It's not going to be okay. How could we ever be so thick as to believe it would be? This is _Rosencrantz_."

H.P. snapped his fingers twice. "Sanderson. Sit down. Now."

Sanderson turned on his heels, flapped his wings three times, and dropped back into his seat. He folded his left leg over his right and crossed his arms. No one spoke. On the opposite side of the window, Rosencrantz had huddled up in the far corner to hug his shoulders and rock back and forth. The phone trilled with the next call. He didn't get up to answer it.

"H.P.," Longwood mumbled at last, "I think we ought to stop the assessment now."

H.P. threw his pen on the floor, then shoved his chair back from the floating table. Much like Sanderson had, he hit the ground and stormed towards the door with clicking heels. Sanderson shared a lifted-eyebrow look with Wilcox, and they both followed with Hawkins and Longwood behind them.

Rosencrantz jerked up his head at the banging open of the door. The pale color drained from his face. He did his utmost to dodge around the Head Pixie and seek solace from his former mentor, but H.P. caught him by the arm and dragged him back to the desk. He grabbed the phone and jabbed in three digits.

"Larson, send a thematic of the magic usage across Florida within the last hour down to Room 1C, stat."

Rosencrantz trembled in H.P.'s grip. "I tried! I tried as hard as I could!" He didn't get an answer, so he wrapped both arms around his boss's waist. "I'm sorry, sir!"

The thematic chart of Florida materialized against the wall beyond the desk with a high _ping_. There were only eight patches of color across the gray- most of them yellow, but two pink. H.P. grabbed Rosencrantz's starpiece from the desk, shoved it into the little pixie's hands, and marched him to the chart.

"Okay, Rosencrantz. You decided they materialized somewhere around here. Now, what do you do with that information?"

Rosencrantz shook his head.

"You can do this. It's in your pixie blood. We are genetically identical. If I can figure out the answer, you can figure it out too. You just have to set aside these emotions you're emitting and think about this situation logically. Forget your feelings and only think."

Rosencrantz shook his head again.

H.P.'s fingers twitched into fists. He held both of them upwards just below his chin, his cell phone clenched between them. His wings shivered behind him. Through tight teeth, he forced out the words, "You _have_ to. There are people out there who are struggling. They're looking to you, a pixie, as a source of stability in this chaotic world."

"For the love of-"

"Sanderson, I'll request your commentary if I decide I want it."

So Sanderson was forced to hover beside Hawkins while Rosencrantz scanned the chart in a helpless manner. Again and again the pixie whimpered, "I can't do it, sir."

H.P. pointed to the yellow patch in the Okefenokee Swamp. After he'd swallowed some of the saliva leaking from his lips, Rosencrantz lifted the starpiece in his trembling arm. He flipped it open and typed out a keyword.

"I-I think I locked onto something, sir. Two human shapes, moving fast, with green energy clinging around them in a cloud. Sir?"

"And what are you going to do about it?" Sanderson pressed when H.P. merely raised one brow.

Rosencrantz shook the little gray cellphone. _Ping_! went the sound of magic. _Thud_! went the sound of four bodies slamming against ground directly in front of him. Two of them were Gary and Betty, who scrambled away in a crab-like manner, yelping. The other two were a pair of massive gray-green alligators. Their tails whipped. Their teeth gnashed. The first one took a slithering step. Then another. Rosencrantz froze, his hand still outstretched. Gary and Betty hit the corner of the room and couldn't back away any further. The only thing that stood between them and the gator was one tiny pixie.

"Send it back, send it back!" the pair screamed together. Sanderson blinked as he took them in. Both had their white shirts and pink sweater vests torn at the bottom so their bare bellies showed. Graduation caps and cheerful bowties were mangled. Swamp muck dripped from their shoes, and was plastered all along Betty's left side. Gary had a scrape across his forehead that bled.

This was going better than Rosencrantz's fifth assessment had, actually.

The first alligator lurched forward in its awkward way. The second began to follow it. "It's not working," Rosencrantz howled, jerking his arm up and down.

"Are you focusing on where you're trying to _ping_ it?" Wilcox asked. He, along with the other pixies, had retreated near the door. Only H.P. kept where he was, near the desk behind the gators. He had his arms folded.

 _"I can't do it!"_

"Sir?" Longwood asked.

 _Ping!_ The nearest alligator disappeared. "Uh-oh," Rosencrantz said, looking after it. "That's not who I meant to teleport to Dimmsdale."

It probably didn't matter. Judging from how heavily Rosencrantz was punching holes in the energy field, Sanderson rather suspected that either Turner, Peterson, Harrington, or Buxaplenty would sense a ripple in the magic-space continuum and take care of it before too long.

The second gator was on its way. H.P. waited until the whimpering little pixie had pinned himself in the corner above Betty and Gary's heads. He dropped his cell phone. They all covered their faces as the alligator lumbered towards them. It parted its jaws, lined with jagged yellow and white points. Before it was near enough to take a bite out of Betty's ankle, H.P. whipped his own starpiece back out from beneath his jacket, spun it through his fingers, and hit just one button. The alligator vanished in a blocky scattering of purple.

Gary was the first to crack open his eyelids. He slid his gaze around the room, then uncurled himself from around Betty. "Mr. Head Pixie! Mr. Sanderson!"

"Sanderson?" The name jolted Betty back to reality. Her face, usually so light and pretty when framed by her pale blonde hair, turned as purple as a bruised plum. _"You!"_

She shoved Gary away and started coming forward, as Sanderson darted from Hawkins to Wilcox to even Longwood. "You lying-wying, treacherous-wecherous, cowardly-wowardly, snakey-wakey-" Her palms hit his chest and sent him flying backwards into the wall. His wings crumpled. "You were supposed to be there for us! We had a deal! Don't- don't think I don't know what's going on if the Head Pixie got involved here. Rosie said it was an exam. This wasn't an a-accident. Would you really have let us _die_ because you had to give Rosie-Wosie your precious testy-westy?"

H.P. snapped his fingers twice. "Betty. Don't forget your place or whom you're speaking to."

Betty spun on her toes to face him, spraying swamp mud from the ends of her pigtails. "I know Gary and I are only humans. Two of billions. Our lives will pass in the blink of your e-e-eyes and you'll forget about us as anything more than blotted-out names in your permanent records. Our eighteen or so years are crumbs compared to your lifespans. But when I s-signed up for this, I didn't realize that you all honestly b-believed that moving up in this business was really more important than _life_. Mortal as we are."

She'd slammed her palms to Rosencrantz's desk on 'life', breathing through her nostrils. Then she whirled around without waiting for an answer and clipped back towards the door.

"I'm finished with all of you. I'm finished with this entire stupid company, if it deserves to be called one. I want out of the benefactor program."

Gary tagged on her heels. "Please, Betty, let's think about this-"

"Elizabeth Lovell! You have not been dismissed!"

She threw her hat behind her without looking back. "I don't have to be your puppet and fake a smile and let you bully me around for another ten years, cone-dome! I quit."

 _"Betty!"_ Gary hollered again. The door slammed after her. He stopped, head hanging, then turned around and clasped his hands. "It's her anxiety attack- The thin atmosphere- She's not thinking clearly, that's it! Please don't hold it against her!"

H.P. snapped his fingers and pointed at the door. "Longwood, I want her brought to Jorgen and her memories wiped. Standard soft-reset procedure: all contact with magic cleared away. Make sure to include the teleportation to Florida and the gators. Take Wilcox with you."

"Yes, sir."

Sanderson grabbed his arm just as Longwood caught Rosencrantz's starpiece. "You're not seriously going through with this. They're _my_ charges. According to their contracts, you have to clear it with me before you can…"

There was no more contract with Betty. It was written in the bottom paragraph: She could quit if she wanted to, so long as she informed both him and the Head Pixie of her intentions. He just hadn't expected her to end up in the same room as both of them before he and Gary could talk her out of it.

Longwood's glance was pitiless. "I don't make the rules, Sanderson. I merely do as I'm asked. That's why I'm company vice president, and you're head of the complaints department." He disappeared with a _ping_ , leaving Sanderson clutching empty air. He blinked, twice.

"You can't do this!" Gary shouted, snatching up Betty's graduation cap and hugging it to his chest. "P-please, sir, give her another chance! What about her brother? Mr. Sanderson promised that next week we could-"

"Don't try my patience, Gary, or you'll be next."

"Y-yes, sir. My apologies, sir."

Rosencrantz, still hovering in the corner, piped up in his small voice then. "D-don't punish them because of me, boss-"

H.P. rounded on him. "You're finished, Rosencrantz. I have had it up to here. You've failed your basic-level placement exam ten times in a row, and I won't be proctoring another. There is no place in the company for you. You can report down the street to laundry for the next eight hundred and forty-six years. Come and talk to me then."

Sanderson lifted one finger. "Ch-check your blood levels, sir."

His ears burning with red, Rosencrantz flew to Hawkins and latched on like a thumbtack. Hawkins bent down to rub him between the wings. "Boss? I mean no disrespect, but perhaps the pixies we're bringing in these days are beginning their training too young."

Waving this notion off with his entire arm, H.P. turned his back and started gathering up the items left on Rosencrantz's desk. "Sanderson, take Gary back to Dimmsdale and stay with him until Longwood and Wilcox return with Betty. While you're there, pin down exactly which godkid is responsible for this and find out everything you can about him or her. Check up on how Flappy is managing as well. I want a full report in my basket by seven."

"Yes, sir." Sanderson floated towards the door. "Follow me, Gary. I need to stop by my office to pick up my starpiece."

The redheaded teenager glanced over his shoulder once as H.P. readjusted his hat. Then Sanderson let the door fall shut and started down the hall. He made it decently far before he realized there were no footsteps behind him. When he turned back, he found that Gary had crumpled cross-legged to the floor with the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes.

"Gary. Come on, we don't want to be here when H.P. comes out. Don't… do that crying thing. It's very… human."

"What?" Gary lifted his face from his palms, teeth set in a cheery smile. "Why, don't be a silly-willy, Mr. Sanderson! If I were crying, it'd mean I had been hurt, and that would never happen in a place as safe and full of love as this one!"

Sanderson took hold of Gary's arm. He didn't exactly pull him to his feet - Gary was, of course, a human and weighed far more than he did - but he did urge him up and start him walking. "We need to go. Please try to conserve your breath. The atmosphere is much thinner here than it is on Earth. Gary? Gary, you stopped again. Why have you stopped?"

Gary's right wrist still rested in Sanderson's grip, but he gazed down at his left, rotating it one way and then the other.

"Nothing," he said. "I'm just bleeding. The gators bit me a few times. Wh-when we were in Florida." He hid the hand holding Betty's cap behind his back and put on his smile again. "So. I don't remember being in Headquarters before. Which one is your office?"

Room 2A. It was up a floor. They stepped into the elevator, and Sanderson pressed the corresponding button. The whole fifteen seconds they were in there, Gary kept his dry face turned towards the ceiling, and he smiled, and smiled, and smiled, with his hands clasped behind his back since he didn't have anyone else's to hold.


	19. (51) Opinion

_Summary:_ Wanda and Cosmo, love their son they may, just aren't as thrilled as they could be to learn that Poof is dating a will o' the wisp. They just don't understand him! Surely Foop will back him up?

 _Characters:_ Poof, Wanda, Cosmo, Foop

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Unwelcome" / "Frozen"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **51\. Opinion** (Post-series)

 _Year of Breath; Winter of the Two-Headed Fox_

* * *

Poof knew it was way too obvious that he wanted something. He had tidied up his room without being asked, his homework was done, he'd played Blocks and Fetch with his father, and he'd cleaned behind his ears in the shower and even rinsed all the dirt from beneath the knobs of his wings. But, well… He did want something, and this was the best way he knew how to get it.

And so it was that after the supper dishes had been cleared away from the table - it was one of those lucky days when his father hadn't pierced the magical shield that kept the fish bowl's water out of the door and flooded the whole place - that Poof summoned up his courage with an intake of air through his nose, and released it. "So, Mama, I've asked a girl out to the starshine cotillion next week."

"Have you, sweetie?" After lining a third teacup on the counter, she brought her eyes lower and squinted at it. Then she added a fourth cup to the end and began to rotate them so all the handles pointed backwards. "That's my responsible little baby- no procrastinating for you."

He flipped the tail of his blue headband over his shoulder with his ponytail and nodded. "I was wondering if maybe I could invite her over for dinner, so you could get to know her and learn to like her as much as I do?"

"Well, sure! I think that sounds wonderful. We could have eggs" - she _poof_ ed up a plate of eggs - "spaghetti" - _poof_ \- "nachos" - _poof_ \- "Why not Friday? You and me could have a real mother-son bonding experience getting this place ready for a girl by Friday. What's her name?"

"Um. Well. Ooh." Poof moved his hand from the headband to the small heart charm that closed his favorite pale green jacket at his neck. "Goldie Goldenglow?"

The fifth teacup slipped from his mother's fingers and snapped in half on the hard floor. The sink water ran on, and on, and on in what was otherwise complete silence.

"Please don't be mad," he squeaked.

"So, do you mean Marigold Goldenglow?"

"Yes, Mama. From school."

Wanda hovered a little closer to the ground. "Oh honey, you… you can't do that. She's a will o' the wisp and, well… you're _older_ now."

Poof tasted his chubby cheeks filling with color like a chipmunk in the process of swallowing paint. "Why does that have to matter? If you would just get to know her-"

Her one usually-upward eyebrow arched a bit higher. "Please don't raise your voice with _me_ , young drake."

"Yeah," his father piped up from where he perched on the kitchen table, swinging his legs and dabbing his fingers at crumbs. "Only your mother's allowed to raise any voice in this tiny underwater castle."

Shaking her head enough to bounce her curl like a jack in the box, Wanda enveloped Poof in her arms and lifted him up (Impressive feat, considering the, well, the baby fat he'd never really grown out of around his middle). "I'm not about to sit back and let some will o' the wisp take my sweet son away underground forever. Sport, they taught you biology in school, didn't they?"

His eyelashes were sticking together. And the upper half of his face was mostly eyelashes, so that was a lot of stick. Poof rubbed them with his left wrist. "Yeah, they did. And one of the things I learned is that fairies only fall in real love once in their whole lives. And I _love_ her."

"Shh, baby. Shh. I know. I know you think you do. Better to love than lose, right? No, wait. That's not how it goes."

Even Cosmo clicked his tongue. "Poor, silly, naive Poof. Of course you can't love a will o' the wisp. You already love me and your mama! We're already your family! You can't just replace us like that."

"Your father's partway right. Almost. Well, sort of. Disregarding his logic" - Wanda held Poof at arms' length, hands gripping his shoulders - "I think maybe you'll have to tell the Goldenglow girl that things have come up, and you can't make it after all."

"But she's not _like_ that-"

"Give it up, hon. I'm not budging."

"But if you would just get to know her-"

Wanda set her lips. "Poof, if there's one more word of protest out of you, then the reason _why_ you can't make it will be because you're grounded for a month."

Poof clenched his fists and struggled to shake his way from his mother's straight-jacket grip. "You guys always have to be so stubborn. It was a whole nother new millennium last week! Times have changed from when you were growing up and went to school."

"Change is for humans, sport."

He threw his arms forward. "I don't get it! Why do you always act like this? It's not like I'm asking to date a stupid brownie or something. I'm no pathetic brownie-kisser!"

Silence slammed down around the kitchen. Mother and son trailed their eyes to Poof's father, who had for once let his smile slip and his wings droop. Like they were on automatic, Cosmo's long fingers reached up to touch his nose.

"I didn't mean it," muttered Poof, averting his gaze. He scuffed a shoe in the direction of the floor, even with his wings still twitching faster than his lower lip. "But Mama, please- I really like her."

She let go of him, which sent him dropping to the ground before he could get his freed wings whirring the way they were meant to. His legs nearly crumpled beneath him when he hit. "Go to your room."

"What?"

"Please, Poof, go to your room. You're too upset to listen to reason and I need to find my list of counter-arguments. We'll talk about this when you've calmed down."

Out of spite, he swiped a banana from the fruit bowl before he flared his wings and snapped off. He half-wished he could march, but given how flimsy his legs were since he always preferred flying to walking, he wasn't willing to risk making a fool of himself via face-plant. In the entrance hall, he chose a pink door, then a blue one, then two greens in a row, and finally a purple with red heart shapes and a golden crown painted in the center. When he slammed it shut, he heard the lock click into place.

He whirled around, mouth and tongue dropping. She locked him in! In his own bedroom! Like a prisoner! Like an animal!

And it wasn't like he had a window. Well. Poof could have _poof_ ed himself out at any time he wanted, or even turned himself into a mouse and squirmed through the hole in the corner, but unless he was pushed too far he was mostly an obedient child, and he was reluctant to act against his parents' obvious warning that he keep in there until he cooled off.

Tossing aside the banana peel into his laundry, Poof grabbed his shiny black scrying bowl from his desk and threw himself back on the bed, hard enough to splash some of the precious liquid on his sheets and purple hair. It took five minutes for the green stripe around the inside of the dish to load all the way up and fling his intent off to Anti-Fairy World - faster than it would have taken him to contact any other Anti-Fairy, actually, what with them sharing the same core - and Poof watched all of it through a half-lidded stare. He had all evening to burn.

"Come on, Rubik's Cube. Pick up. Pick up."

Splashes bubbled up along the surface of the water like singing raindrops. After another several minutes, the idiot on the other end finally realized he had an incoming message and swished his own bowl. The water smoothed over to reveal a short, thin, awkward, acne-faced figure dressed in a dark blue sweater and a black lab coat that shimmered sometimes between navy and maroon, his head cocked to the right. Two inky coils of hair lay thick and tight as snakes on top of his forehead.

"Poof? I hope this is important. After decades of effort, I finally caught one of the dratted little pixies and I was just about to draw out my tools and perform a dissec- Sorry, would you pardon me for a moment?" He turned around. "Stop giving me that stare, Southmark. Can't you see I'm using the bowl? Any more sass out of you and I really will let that hipposelachi swallow you up."

Still dull-eyed, Poof waved his wand. Distance cost him a solid chunk of energy (and at least a few months' worth of his allowance), but he could see the puff of purple smoke on the other side of the line. The pixie _poof_ ed as near to Pixie World as Poof could bother to toss him. Foop gave an outraged shriek.

"Oh, that's quaint, beach ball! You come sticking your nose into my business and then interfere with it! When I tell my father about this-"

"Foop, I just want to talk something over, and you're the only one I can trust to convince me that I'm really wrong. I told my parents about my plans to ask Goldie to the starshine cotillion on Saturday. They didn't take it too well."

The anti-fairy's jaw didn't slacken, and his eyebrows didn't shoot up, but he did stand there staring down into the bowl for quite awhile before he wriggled one claw in his pointed blue ear.

"I'm sorry. Start again, from the part you said at the beginning."

Poof leaned back, bracing himself with one hand. "Yeah, I practically licked their pointed shoes all night tonight, but my parents won't hear it."

"You're pulling my 'stache."

"No, they won't even listen to my-"

"I mean about actually wanting to ask Marigold Goldenglow somewhere as- as undeniably un-platonic as that. You're turning this relationship more and more serious, aren't you? You are. Why not just notch her wings now? Though I suppose that's only a fairy thing and a wisp wouldn't go for it. Drat." Foop patted his pockets. "I've actually been meaning to talk to you about this. I've just been busy. For. The last thousand and twelve years. Oh, snake oil- it would seem I've misplaced my list of counter-arguments. No matter. I don't need it." Clucking his tongue like an anxious dolphin, he twirled one end of his thin mustache around a finger. "Poof, buddy, my best friend… You'd truly like my opinion? You know she's a will o' the wisp, don't you?"

"What's the problem?"

"The problem? What _isn't_ the problem? Where would you like me to begin?" He set his palms facing each other and moved them from his left side to his right as he plowed onward with, "Her people's habit of killing drakes who aren't in heat or the fact that they keep harems?"

The purple fairy lowered his chin to his chest. "I don't think it would be so bad. Not as long as I was with her."

Pushing away the bowl on his desk with a force that sent the water shivering, Foop grabbed the tips of his mustache and flattened them to his cheeks. "Oh no. Ohh, no. This flirty business has gotten to your head. Curse my hunches always being correct! … Also, curse my dratted hunch and constant squint. I really ought to invest in a charming pair of spectacles. But you really do want to date her seriously now! Seriously! And at your age too, oh no oh no oh no. No. Please, please don't do this to me, Poof. You know I have no choice but to get with the Anti-Marigold if you, y'know… mate. With her. Especially if she takes you down to her burrow."

"How is that my problem?"

Foop's eyes moved back and forth over the watery image of Poof's face, his claws now embedded in the dark hair on his head. For the moment he was speechless. Then, "I- I'm the High Count's son. I have an image to maintain- my reputation! What are people going to say when I end up tangled in some random harem off in the dreary forest someplace, sharing my wife with three or four other drakes and raising half a dozen pups who aren't necessarily my own?"

"That your counterpart's a wisp-kisser. They can't hold that against you. Hey, at least she already likes you. You'll probably be her favorite. Lucky you."

"But my father will disown me!"

Poof crossed his arms behind his head. "Still not my problem. Try harder. I'm not convinced."

"That's it! You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? A-attempting to cost me everything I desire and have worked this long to obtain. But that's not _fair_."

"Am I usually fair to you?"

He watched as Foop briefly disappeared from the bowl, then came back, and left again. He was pacing back and forth, clinging to the floppier of his two large curls and muttering under his breath. The lab coat billowed behind him like a shadow. Then he took up the scrying bowl.

"All right. I warned you, Poof. If that's the way it's going to be, I have no choice but to call off our ceasefire and torture you until you see reason."

"What, don't you like Anti-Goldie? She's like the only one of your people who doesn't cower at the sight of a boomerang. She drives a jeep. A tiny pink battery-powered jeep she stole from Anti-Longwood, but still. She does that spinny baton flippy thing with her wand. She chugs lava by the gallon. And she cooks a mean burrito."

"She's an _anti-will o' the wisp_! Do you _know_ how they get when they're in heat? Ask any one of my people and you'll hear a thundering chorus of agreeing voices that there is nothing more horrifying on this side of the Divide! And if they're not in heat, they're having pregnancy mood swings. No, no, no. Literally _anybody else_ would be fine. But not the Anti-Marigold. Dear Rhoswen-" He pinched his nose. "Why are we even having this conversation? This is the kind of talk you have with 650-Years! Not a fairy a couple weeks away from finishing upper school for good. I mean, look at you! Look at us! We're practically ready for high school, and yet here we are quibbling about something that ought to be entirely obvious."

At first, Poof hugged his knees and did not answer. Foop ranted on for several more minutes, and when it became obvious that he didn't plan to wind down before morning, the fairy finally cut him off with an obligatory, "I love her".

"Pah! Even other will o' the wisps don't like will o' the wisps. And you know your parents are going to find out."

"My mama and dad eloped. They know what I'm going through, and they can't boss me around like this."

Foop frowned. "Oh. Well. My father asked my mother's father for his permission to court her."

"I love Goldie, and I'm going to ask her out, and one of these days I'm going to move to Tennessee and live in her burrow-"

"No, you _won't_." Foop lifted his obsidian wand and pointed it at the curtain of water between them. The tip glowed a deep, sparkling crimson. "Not once I get through with you this weekend. You can't just- Please, Poof! Don't throw away our lives like this! Seriously, who does that?"

"-and we'll have a whole bunch of beautiful crossbreed babies, and _you can't stop me_!" Poof splashed his hand in the water and broke off the connection. The bowl he slammed back in its place. His head thumped against his pillow. When he closed his eyes, he was there again. That day she'd let him hold her hand on the field trip to the aquarium, even during lunch. That day they'd moved on from playing cars and blocks during indoor recess to playing footsie beneath their desks. That day the power went out and she'd clasped his hands to her chest and held them until his gasping trickled away. That day he'd let her flaunt his green junior letterman jacket to her damsel friends. That day he'd ran his thumb down her cheek while she played with the swirl in his hair. That day she'd perched at the mouth of the cave where they'd sought shelter when they were hunting for toads for their biology project and the storm swept in. She'd had her arm bandaged up in her cast, and sat peering at him over her shoulder as the rain pinged down and her wings glistened in the wetness.

They'd had their first kiss in the saucerbee dugout, and their second, and their twenty-eighth. Poof knew every board and nail of that dugout, and he knew Goldie loved him from the way she caressed the curve of his thick neck with her pale fingers and licked at the saliva still glimmering pink on her lips whenever she pulled away. She always pulled away at the worst of times, right when his magic lines were jittering with a tingle-fritzy high and he wanted to kiss her most. Oh, she made him gape and whine like a nymph again, a nymph wanting his mother's milk, and she'd tickle his nose and step backwards and lure him closer with that wiggling index finger. If he could catch her around the waist and spin her into the air, she'd let him kiss her again. He was a full-blooded fairy. Fairies were the fastest. He always caught her.

He knew Goldie loved him because she always played board games with rapture and teased him when he tried to throw the game for her. She'd smack him with her cards and game pieces, and he'd grab her wrist and pull her into his lap. Sure, he'd spent many a breakfast scribbling in the answers to problems he and Goldie were supposed to have worked on together the night before, but he was clever and attentive and his grades never slipped very low. They worked as a perfect team in self-defense class. No, he definitely didn't mind shielding her back, even if it sometimes took one or two slaps upside the head from Foop to remind him that he was supposed to be looking the _other_ way.

They partnered on everything the teachers allowed, as they should- being the two most popular kids in school meant they had to maintain their image, act as was expected of them. Perform all the expected public displays of affection, have all the expected fights in front of the crowds, get caught tangled in one another's arms in all the expected places. And when his mama had gone off on a weekend camping trip with his godsister once, Poof had even convinced his distractible father to allow Goldie inside, and the three of them had spent the whole night together in front of the TV before they'd _poof_ ed her home. It had been a very nice doorstep kiss. Foop had come into history class positively purple the next day, and they'd gotten a good laugh out of the way he flushed and stammered when he and Anti-Goldie accidentally bumped shoulders in the lunch line, freezing the both of them eye to eye unblinkingly, and finally thrown down his tray and wrapped his leathery wings around his face.

Goldie was beautiful. How could Poof _not_ drool over a damsel that beautiful? What did it matter that his eyes glazed over when she babbled on about the acting career she hoped to pursue? What did it matter that she'd never gotten him a present on his birthday, or anything for Christmas besides a deep smooch beneath the mistletoe? As long as she whispered into his ear with that sweet Southern accent - like something straight out of an action movie - when he held her against his neck, _what did it matter_ if she was a will o' the wisp?

Bubbles signaled that Foop was trying to call him back, but Poof yanked his covers further over his ponytail and left the bowl to simmer. What could he possibly have to say? Anti-Fairies thought love was only a name to give the relationships that were forced together among their kind courtesy of their primary counterparts on the other side of the Divide. Foop had never been in _real_ love. He could never understand.


	20. (7) Shouldn't Have Survived

_Summary:_ The Burger World employee doesn't know what to think when Foop, three hours old, wanders in and demands solid food.

 _Characters:_ Kenny, Foop, Gary, Betty

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Think Positive" / "Hidden"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **7\. Shouldn't Have Survived** ("Anti-Poof")

 _Year of Breath; Spring of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

The only human on the entire tiny rocky planet lived and breathed his work. Really, he didn't have much of a choice. Where else was he to go- outside for a leisurely walk? Um, how 'bout no? Find another suicidal sucker, thanks. It was barely five degrees above freezing beyond the door on the best days, and the slightest tear in the oxygen and gravitational field bubble around the fast-food joint would suck his eyeballs out of their sockets before he could even think of saying, "Can I take your order?"

He lived his work because he couldn't leave it. He breathed it because he'd never had another choice. He didn't necessarily love it because in his younger years he'd once partaken of a life he liked better, but now his work was all he had to cling to. The rules of the game were simple: Do your job, obey orders, keep the Head Pixie happy, and you survive another painful day.

Not that the Head Pixie had ever come to visit him. Not that Mr. Sanderson really ever came to visit him, unless he wanted something.

Everybody wanted something from him. It was the way of things. Occasionally some random customer would make small talk over the counter with him, but only until he finished whipping up their food. Even the various interesting types of currency he earned were all useless in his eyes; once a month, Mr. Sanderson or Mr. Longwood or one of the other pixies would show up and take it all. In return, he'd get free toilet paper, more of the same greasy food he'd eaten every day of his life since he'd turned nine, and maybe a phone call home. Or to that weird daycare center that sort of passed as home to his sister nowadays, anyway.

"Why?" He had once asked Mr. Sanderson on a day he actually _had_ decided to take a walk around his fifteen-by-seventeen-square foot lump of floating rock (excellent view of the Big Dipper, if nothing else). Taking a brown pebble, he'd hurled it into open space as far as his arm could muster. It hit the oxygen bubble with a ripple and passed through without breaking it. Supposedly, it would take some serious power to bust open that thing. "Why do you make me stay here? What's my purpose? When do I get to go, I don't know, home?"

Mr. Sanderson had continued to arrange the Boudacian coins in his palm without looking up. Boudacian knives, more like- honestly, did even their _money_ have to be deadly to handle? Their personalities were irritating enough. "You're an orphan," he'd said. "This is your home. You've been provided with everything you need here."

"But I'm useful here, right? I'm still helping you guys out by doing this?"

"Of course. Now, go take a shower. I'll cover your post for twenty minutes, and then I must be on my way. Was there some sort of birthday present you wanted me to bring your sister?"

That had probably been four years ago. He'd spent over a decade in this place, and half that time running it all on his own. It was elegant but cramped, organized but dirty, popular but infamous, friendly but distant, old-fashioned but up-to-date, and it all belonged to him.

And late one morning, before he'd found the opportunity to scrub the frost off the window panes again, he met a newcomer. An awkward blue baby of a newcomer who had been floating outside the door for five minutes until a seafoam-haired elf girl by the name of Laurie had at last flown over to open it for him. He obviously had no idea who was in charge of the place, or even where he was at all. Though, the human teenager behind the counter half-wished Laurie wouldn't have let him in. Maybe it was mean - almost as mean as sticking a genie's lamp underwater for an hour on end until the insides flooded, or stealing an elf's shoes, or taking just one item from a leprechaun's careful hoard of forty-nine - but Anti-Fairies were _always_ great fun to watch when smooth, flat glass was involved, and he could have used a little entertainment.

The kid looked like he'd never slept in his life. Creases like crows' feet pressed into the corners of his bloodshot eyes. When he flapped his leathery wings, he listed somewhat to his right side. There was someone else who always did that- someone important, but not quite important enough for the fast food joint's single employee - slash - manager - slash - environmental health officer to remember, at least on a cold day like this one. He clutched his baby bottle to his chest with one fist, and the thumb of the other hand appeared to have taken up permanent residence in his mouth. Even if he weren't dressed in the cubed exoskeleton of Anti-Fairy pups, the scrubby, slightly hunchbacked, brace-faced strawberry-blond boy sipping a chesberry milkshake and working out the exchange rate between multiple foreign coins could have guessed this was his first visit; he turned in circles and gawked at everything.

Kenny Lovell arched just one eyebrow. After flipping the straw to the other side of his foam cup, he leaned across the counter with his arms folded. "You're a long way from Hy-Brasil at your age, friend. Welcome to Burger World. What can I get for you?"

Hesitantly, the anti-fairy set his bottle down (though he didn't release it) and braced his palm against the counter. "I need directions down to Earth. And can I get a Number 5 Peppy Meal and a soda?"

Yep. A baby. A legitimate baby, and he talked. Never got less creepy. Kenny had noticed over the years that the Anti-kids tended to talk young (though he'd never met any who ripped out sentences quite so eloquently as _that_ ) while their 'primary' counterparts suffered through embarrassing pooferty noises for the first year of life. Apparently that was the trade-off for them having clean 'magic veins' that ran like roots through their bodies and connected them directly to the universal energy field, as opposed to the watered-down version that most of the Antis were left to content themselves with by drawing power from their host's core.

Mostly, anyway. Sometimes there were exceptions, and weak fairies like that shy Binky showed up one day, and the next day one might meet his counterpart and find the latter far stronger. Either way, there always had to be an equal balance of magical prowess between primary and anti-entity, and only when it was approximately even between the two did you wind up with either double talkers or double 'poof poof'-ers.

Thus, seeing as he could speak, the blue child wasn't likely half the threat he was clearly attempting to portray himself as with his square chest puffed and chubby neck arched. Nudging his neat white cap up with his fat forefinger, Kenny said, "Kiddo, there's no way in the name of smoof you're weaned. Solid foods are for big kids."

Wrong thing to say. The anti-fairy's face pinched together. The soft tip of his bottle evidently doubled as his starpiece, because it began to glow blue. Blue was the color that magic automatically turned when the user was frustrated or defending themselves or something, and that was honestly amusing. "I'm three entire hours old. I assure you, acne-cheeks, I can stomach anything. Hand over the box of chicken nuggets and waffle fries at once as I commanded, or you will be forcing my unpleasant hand to bring you another decade closer to your untimely DOOM!"

The fluorescent lights flickered on and off and on overhead. The one above Table 3 had been dead for the last two years. There were eight patrons - all of whom except one Kenny knew by name, thank you - and all of whom twisted their heads around to stare at the raging child. Kenny nodded to the black and yellow wand lying on the lower counter about two inches from the cash register. "You know I was taught how to use this thing like a real magical business manager, right? I'm not some defenseless Earth human like my big sister. I know how to fight back. I'm not just going to let you walk over me like a doormat. You can't beat me there."

If the anti-fairy had been older, perhaps he would have debated the chances of Kenny following through on the threat. As it was, he hesitated, then redirected his bottle towards an imp called Stanley behind him and released a blast of boiling magic. Stanley promptly turned into a hairbrush and clattered to the chair. Kenny caught the eye of one of the fairies and, when the pup's irritation had cooled, she _poof_ ed him back into his regular form, his antennae waving on their stalks.

"Can I still get my grape soda?" the anti-fairy wanted to know, leaning to his right again and shaking his hand like the blast had drained him half-dry, and he wasn't about to admit it verbally. He popped his stubby thumb back into his mouth. He didn't even have scales along it yet, nor the soft batty fur around his face. Well. Maybe a little near his nose and chin. A bit blacker than usual, making it look an unnerving amount like he was already sporting both a pencil-thin mustache and a goatee, but… there.

"I can't serve you that. I'm not permitted to distribute concentrated processed sugar to minors unless your parents are around to supervise you. You'll have to have something else. I can offer you milk, fruit juice, and water. That's what you're allowed to get."

"I have parents," he insisted, and as he waved his stubby arm to indicate this, two anti-fairies that Kenny at once recognized as the High Count and Countess appeared behind him with a pop. Ah, so that's whose pup he was, and it definitely explained the 'limping' on his right side as he flapped his wings. Maybe it was genetic. Kenny flipped the wand into his fingers and aimed it first at Anti-Cosmo, then at Anti-Wanda. It beeped both times.

"Nothing there but pure magic, distributed nice and evenly all the way through. Those are two holograms, and really good lookers too since you're so young and everything, and then also you're a boy among your kind. Anything else? Go on. Try again. Third time's the charm. You'll get it. I know you can."

Up went the anti-fairy's thick eyebrows. "When is age of majority, precisely?"

"I've sort of been told it's roughly in the ballpark of something like maybe about two hundred thousand years or so, give or take a bit, I think."

The pup's square face slammed down on the counter. After a few seconds, a noise like a snore escaped his mouth. When it went on, Kenny reached out to tap his shoulder, but before he could, the anti-fairy jerked backwards again and shook out his wings. "About that juice you said you offered? Could I pretty please have apple?"

"Sure deal. And do you still want those nuggets? Okay, your sickbed. When you inevitably need to hurl after digesting something other than milk this soon after birth, please run to the edge of the asteroid and do it over the edge into oblivion. That's what it's there for. Now, I only need to scan your starpiece."

The anti-fairy jerked away in an instant, lifting his arm up to shoot and protesting that he could very easily just _steal_ the juice, or for that matter a soda thick with sugar, but Kenny still managed to focus his wand and make it read the cap of the baby bottle. The receipt began to print from the cash register, instantly catching the attention of both pixies at their far table (Mr. Saddler and Mr. Andrews, if he wasn't mistaken, though pixies didn't come around often and he was admittedly a couple tads rusty).

"That's been sent to your parents' automatic tab," he told the brat, tearing off the receipt. "It's all paid. Credited. You won't have to worry about it. Seeing as that bottle of yours obviously works like a wand, the memory chip's all synced up to it, and I get to keep this fun doohickey in my scrapbook for legal reasons. What's your name, kid? What can I call you? What do you answer to?"

The anti-fairy mumbled something into his shirt, tugging on the collar of his pajamas.

"Come again? Speak up. Little louder. Can't hear ya, bud."

"Unfortunate as it is, my name is Foop."

Kenny took a paper cup from the stack on his left and went off to fill the juice. "Huh. Interesting. That's a new one. Never met anyone by the name of 'Foop'. Is that supposed to be a quick way of tossing out 'Anti-Foop', or…?"

"Well, it's- it's going to be Anti-Poof, really, on my birth certificate and everything, but my father has a famous general by that name - Anti-Poof Anti-Everwish and perhaps you've heard of him? Lovely chap, or so I've been told - and he thought it would serve both he and I and all of us best if we simply set the record straight from the get-go."

The famous Baby Poof's anti-fairy, then. "So Anti-Cosmo named you 'Foop'. He went and gave you a different name. He spelled it backwards."

His comment made Foop flick up his pointed ears. "So you do know us, then!"

"I should," Kenny replied through a snort. He returned with the order of apple juice and nuggets and slid both bag and cup across the counter on a bright red tray that matched his bowtie and pants exactly. "I'd better. I've heard it said. You pick up things. I listen. You stick around this business for as long as I have, kid, and you'd have to be a sock puppet not to."

"I would advise you for your own sake to quit with the calling me by that demeaning term." Foop blinked around at the walls, violet eyes wide and bright. He brought the acid-resistant straw of the apple juice to his lips. "Do you get a wide assortment of my kind passing through here? Anti-Fairies?"

Kenny took up a cloth and made as though he were wiping down the tiled counter, but he didn't remove his hand from the handle of the wand he'd been left with all those years ago. "Some. I've seen fairies, I've seen aliens, and I've even met your parents. Multiple times. Anti-Wanda likes her bread toasted only on the inside so it takes an extra second before you hear the bone-like crunch."

Foop pulled slightly away, clinging to his tray with tiny claws like toothpicks. He'd balanced his bottle beside his other drink, although if he kept making sharp lurching movements like that, it would probably topple over to the ground in a matter of wingbeats. "Who _are_ you?"

Kenny shrugged. "Nobody important. Nobody anyone remembers. I don't think I've even given my name out to anybody for what has to be ten years. And I'm gonna keep it that way for as long as I can. I've gotta have _something_ that's my own. Even something silly."

"Are you who… who… heehoo…" The word was apparently difficult for even his capable tongue to pronounce. Not that that seemed to be uncommon among the magical folk. "Are you human?"

"Mmhm, sure am, or at least I was the last time I checked. I was born one of them, even though I wasn't like raised by them for long or anything. Born in Jetmore, Kansas all the way down there in the good ol' U.S. of A."

Foop grinned. It was a chilling grin, full of pointed teeth that made Kenny flinch inwardly and wrack his brains to remember whether Anti-Wanda, who would have been the one to pass her wings along to her son, was a vampire bat subspecies or something a little more harmless, like a fruit-eater. "In that case, you can surely direct my course in the way of Earth, then?"

"Uh… sure? It's not far. You're just on the wrong side of Fairy World for it, kid. Oh- not kid, not kid! It was an accident. Force of habit. I forgot. I just remembered. I won't do it again. So, just go straight thattaway. It's a bit of a lengthy trip, but if you stay on course, you should run right across Choketroll Pass. Straight shot to where you wanna get." Kenny pointed directly forward to the other side of the building and decided not to warn Foop about the windows, just to see what would happen. Satisfied, Foop spun around, tray in hand (he either didn't know it was supposed to stay here, or didn't care), and flew off in the direction Kenny had indicated.

"Don't, don't!" shouted two or possibly three of the patrons, but Foop didn't register them. At least not until it was too late. Instead, he ran face-first into the glass with a dull yet satisfying _thunk_. The Peppy Meal bag and drinks waterfalled from his hands, everything rolling across the ground. It was clean ground, at least- Kenny had a lot of spare time to mop.

"What the-?" Foop lay his palms against the solid surface. A note of panic trickled into his voice. Blue fingers crawled left and right. And, like every Anti-Fairy Kenny had ever seen, despite the fact that he had just touched it and proved that there was something in his way, the kid withdrew and rammed into the thing again. Then again. "That's not- that's not any kind of waterfall! What- what is this strange force field?"

Chuckles sprang up from a few of the more sadistic people in the fast-food joint, Kenny included, and Foop snapped around. His left wing clipped the window hard enough to make him cry out. "Stop _laughing_ at me, you utter imbeciles! DEATH! Fiery, painful death will rain as a great cursing upon all of you!"

Kenny rubbed the smirk from his face as best as he could with thumb and forefinger. "It's called _glass_ , pint-size. I'm gonna make the guess that if you're only three hours old, your parents haven't explained to you yet that Anti-Fairies can't see anything that nice and clean and smooth. Not that I'm bragging, but those windows were cleaned by someone who cared. Look, you're bats. It's in your DNA."

The fists rained down against it. Faster and faster, louder and louder. "This is an outrageous and blatant impossibility! The Harbinger of the Doom Time cannot be contained!"

"Little dude, just chillax." Kenny reached for his abandoned chesberry milkshake and took another sip. Even in the eternal chill that clung like moss to Burger World, it had turned more liquidy than he usually liked. "If you need to, you can hit it again with your echolocation. Just remember that it's not water and move away from it. The door's over there about two feet to your right. It's just your kind's little cross to bear in life: you either can't see the stuff with your eyes, or you can't see through it with your echolocation." And if Anti-Fairies weren't annoyed after a meeting with a glass sheet, they were baffled by their inability to pick up a clear read on anything moving on the opposite side, and if they weren't baffled, they turned panicked, every time, either way. Never got old.

"What? Not water? You want me to" - Foop tapped the pane, his brow furrowing - "echolocate? I don't- I can't- How might I manage to- Y-you deliberately guided me into this horrid trap so you might make a mockery of me for your own selfish amusement! … Except for the part that involves me ending up as the butt of the joke, I can't help but find myself somewhat impressed by your surprising cruelty. Credit where credit is due."

Kenny upturned his left palm in a half-shrug.

And then Foop looked down. Even from what may as well have been the opposite end of the whole asteroid, Kenny swore he watched the young anti-fairy's purple eyes narrow until they were little more than dots. He bent down and picked up a small, soft object that had tumbled from the bag with his chicken nuggets and apple chunks. "Is this a Baby Poof toy?"

"They've come in all our Peppy Meals for the last three months." Kenny widened his own eyes as he realized what he'd said. He took his right hand off his face again. "That's your counterpart then, isn't it? Your host is the famous Baby Poof- of course! Duh! Obviously! I even thought it for a second earlier, but I didn't really follow through with the realization. That makes sense. The famous fairy baby! Gah, I'm an idiot for not making the full connection. Although in my defense, I don't get a lot of news up here. Just for being Baby Poof's offshoot, I should've like offered you half-price or something."

Foop gnashed his teeth. His hand squeezed around the purple doll, which was… not the sort of reaction Kenny had ever witnessed any anti-entity perform towards anything resembling their host in his life, and it made him curious. The term 'host' was used for a very accurate reason. No more fairy meant no more anti-fairy. Sure, he was no expert on the subject, but he was immersed enough into the world his customers lived in to know that two counterparts crossing paths at the young age of three hours old was not a common occurrence by any means. And yet, no one snarled and wrung the neck of a plush toy with both hands by accident. How could so much hate be boiling in the blood of one so small?

He stuffed the Poof toy into a crumpled front pocket of his blue pajamas. "Well, this is simply no matter for me, then. As much as I loathe the name, Foop shall scoff upon your jeers and rise from among the ashes of scorn like the mighty born-again phoenix, and let what comes next fall upon your own head! The time of doom is now!" Diving down, Foop shoved several chicken nuggets into his mouth. Then he snatched his bottle and his apple juice up and in the same swift movement blasted a gaping hole in the side of the restaurant. A pair of gnomes in that area shielded their faces, but maybe would have been better off shielding their hamburgers. Kenny pitied them. He wasn't allowed to offer refunds once the food had passed into customer hands.

"Come on," he complained, watching as Foop summoned up some sort of blue-gray rocket-powered cart that really looked as though it belonged on a theme park ride. "That's not cool, kid."

"It's on me today, Lovell." After Foop had puttered away, the fairy who had brought Stanley back from his brief excursion as a hairbrush spun her wand again. Yellow bricks began to fly back into place one at a time. Most of the stray glass shards across the floor and tables shimmered out of existence. New, fresh windowpanes sprang up in the wall, free even of the dusty brown streak marks that had been fixed in the high corners for years.

The word 'Thanks' was only just leaving Kenny's tongue when the entire restaurant erupted like a stabbed balloon.

The electric blue light was searing, and worse yet- it was everywhere. Kenny flew backwards, not to mention upwards, with a huge chunk of white, tiled counter embedded in his gut. In an ironic twist of fate, the heavy first-aid kit banged against the back of his head and turned his vision briefly black. Chairs, cabinets, sugary soft drinks, picture frames, plastic trays, machinery, and currency of various shapes and feels spiraled around him like the rain he hadn't seen in fifteen years.

He squeezed his eyes shut, though the force of the blast ripped at the lids. The air tasted dead and frozen around him. "Lovell!" one of the patrons screamed. Laurie? Maybe it was Laurie. Maybe it was the elf with the seafoam hair. Maybe it was Stanley. Maybe it was the pixies. Maybe it was all of them. He didn't know that. What he did know is that he flew for about twenty-five feet, and then he and the chunk of Burger World that had flown with him smacked into the side of the oxygen bubble barrier. The wall and several of the mismatched appliances passed through with a slurping noise. Stanley grabbed Kenny's wrist and wrenched him away before he could follow it.

"Steady, steady Lovell ol' boy and- Smoof, you're chubby. Agnes, Harriet- Little help here, maybe? Kid took a mighty sharp blow of magic in there, and he's not resistant to it like we are."

Their warm bodies crowded around him one by one over the following couple minutes once they had shaken themselves free from debris, So many, so many. Kenny covered his eyes with his limp, curled hands, but somebody pulled them off. Suddenly hot lips were pressed against his own.

"Wha-?" he choked out.

"Whoa, back off him, Krystal. He doesn't have lines or breathe magic. You're just smothering him."

That was a sobering thought. If he should need CPR one day, most all of the people who ever came up here didn't have lungs with which to give it to him. Kenny found himself trying to sit up among multiple arms that had enveloped him from underneath to form a sort of cot, coughing, hacking- pounding on his chest.

"He sliced the energy field like a crosshatch with that laser show of his," Laurie said, watching him. Kenny focused his bleary eyes upon her. Laurie was an eastern elf- the only one of the three subspecies types with wings, Mr. Sanderson had patiently informed him once when he was thirteen and nosy. But no matter the subspecies, all had honey bee embedded in their genetics. The buzzing she made near his ear as her wings pumped up and down was sort of familiar and comforting, in a weird way. Like an old home. She went on with, "It's going to take at least half an hour before it seals itself together again."

"That's too long," Kenny protested, spitting blood across his wrist. His hand was so cold. Something had embedded itself in his side. A knife from the silverware drawer, probably. He eased it out with an arm that didn't want to function very well. Fork. So close. "There's not… not magic around here, in the air. You'll all run out. You'll asphyxiate. You'll go dusty. You'll die."

"That's right. We're leaving. Now." Laurie turned her expectant gaze around their awkward cluster. "Where are we going to mass _poof_ off to until the situation gets taken care of, hm?"

Silence. A few mutters. An argument. Then, uncertainly, one of the pixies raised his hand. "I might suggest we bring him to Jetmore, Kansas."

"Mr. Sanderson will need to be contacted about this development, of course," said the other.

Stanley looked accusingly at the pair. "And what business is this of Pixies?"

Mr. Saddler motioned to the drifting wreckage around them with a dull wave of his hand. "Pixies Incorporated owns this plot of space, actually. Burger World's a subsidiary."

"I don't want… Jetmore," Kenny wheezed, coughing again. "Do you know… Dimmsdale, California? That's where my sister is. It's where she lives. She's supposed to be there. Her name… her name's Elizabeth Lovell. We call her Betty sometimes, my sister."

"Shh, shh. Hold on there, Lovell. Don't talk or move just yet. We'll want to make sure you're all okay. Teleporting someone anywhere while unaware of their injuries is a serious health risk. Just let us check you over. Shh, shh."

Harriet had found the runaway first-aid kit, although she obviously didn't know what to do with it. After several minutes spent wrapping various portions of his limbs, Kenny finally managed to convince his ex-customers that while he was obviously sore, nothing felt particularly injured. The lot of them who could fly (the two gnomes were still stranded on a nearby bit of table) were all starting to sink lower and lower as the effects of the magic field waned around them. They couldn't stay here much longer. Time to get going.

"I know where we'll find your sister," said Mr. Andrews, taking his gray cell phone from an inner pocket of his coat. "Though I will of course require payment for my services, I can _ping_ all of us-"

"Hold on," Agnes interrupted, grabbing the pixie's wrist (much to his poker-faced alarm, it seemed from the skip in his wings, though he didn't immediately throw his starpiece over his shoulder like Mr. Sanderson always seemed to do when caught off guard). She pulled him an inch nearer through the air without letting go of Kenny's foot. "How do you know Lovell's sister, of all people?"

Mr. Saddler made another of his unenthusiastic arm motions and droned, "How exactly did you think he got up here in the first place?"

"I… didn't ask. I was just grateful."

Krystal leaned forward, bending Kenny's wrist in an awkward direction that he struggled not to whimper at. "You're telling me you brought the kid up there from Earth? Alone?"

"He was an orphan. We simply put him to use. Now, would you like me to _ping_ you all to a location where the energy field is less cluttered, or should you like to continue arguing until the field crumples inward in this part of the universe and we all drop our lines? I'm already down about a third."

So with arms linked - some more than others - they flicked off to Dimmsdale. It had been so long since Kenny teleported, and upon their arrival he fought to sit up just so he could be sick on the floor.

"Is this… the Learn-A-Torium?"

They'd rematerialized in some sort of office, with the door propped open. Flappy Bob's office was his first thought, until blearily he noticed the two desks crammed into the small room so they faced each other, each equipped with a swivel chair and a large bowl of candy. The nearest desk had a framed photo peering down at them. It was Betty and Gary, back when they were younger. He wasn't in it.

"Nice aim, Andrews," Harriet remarked sarcastically from where she'd landed on the top of one of the bookshelves.

"Don't even talk to me," one of the elves snapped back, yanking the spines of a potted cactus from her rear.

"It's been rearranged since last I came here," he protested.

"Oh, don't let those damsels get to you. You did fine."

"Using magic just takes practice," Stanley added.

"Yeah, not too bad for a pixie."

"… Wait. That's not what I meant whatsoever."

"What silly, naughty children have run away back there into our office?" asked a cheerful voice from beyond the door. A voice that Kenny recognized, and it made him melt.

She was looking good. Better than he'd expected- all youthful pink cheeks and the same fluffy pigtails he'd never seen her without. She seemed like she hadn't aged a day since the last time Mr. Sanderson had _ping_ ed her and Gary up to see him.

"New fresh meat," she laughed as she walked in. "Now, how did you sneaky-weaky kidlets manage to squeeze in here without going through the front door?"

"Maybe we left a window open," Gary said from the other side of the door. "Good morning, special guests! Welcome to Gary and Betty's Camp-"

Betty finished the phrase "Learn-A-Torium" with a brilliant smile, but Gary choked on the words and gawked at them. Pure panic was uncomfortably evident on his face and in the way his hands drooped at the wrists.

Kenny barely glanced at him. He kept his eyes focused on his sister. In another second she would scream, "No- no- Kenny, you're hurt! You can't be hurt!" the way she used to when they were little and he would scratch himself on this cardboard box or that sharp desk corner, and it would be the first time he'd heard his own name in ten years.

Instead, she set her hands on her hips and cocked her head and, beaming, said, "You don't look like you're here for us to babysit. Are you here to apply for the open position? Rules and Regulations fellows have been knocking-wocking at our door for ages, telling us we need to up our staff! What's your name, new best friend?"

Still crouched on his knees and hoping she wouldn't notice the stinking mess behind him, he smiled up at her. It had been so long, and he'd grown so much, that she didn't recognize him. "Kenny. Betty, it's Kenny."

"That's a nice name," Laurie mumbled behind him.

Betty again- "Kenny!" The hands migrated to her knees as she leaned down towards him. "Nice to meet you, Kenny. You can head right on to the super-safe Fun-Sensing Room! Down the right hand hall, fourth left by the happy front door!"

"Aha… Betty, it's _me_. Kenny Lovell. Your little brother." He held out his arms.

"Oh, silly-willy basketcase," she said, rapping on his skull with her knuckles. "I don't have a brother. I just have Gary-Wary, but he's a lot like a brother to me."

"Ha ha, so we're having funny jokey-wokey time a bit earlier than usual today," Gary said, clapping his hands and beaming equally. "Betty, why don't you take our little ones to the Day Care room, and I'll get our big friend here all taken care of and on his way!"

"Uh, what?" Stanley said, dropping his hold on Kenny's elbow. Laurie drew her screwdriver and the other fairies went for their wands, but just as they pulled them out, Betty scooped four of them up at once and caused all but one to drop them. Krystal clung to hers dearly with both hands, evidently realizing that she couldn't very well use magic in front of a human like this without getting her license revoked for a few decades or so. One of the gnomes still on the ground attempted to make a dive to freedom, but Betty urged him through the door and along the cheerful hallway with her foot. The pixies and the other gnome, who had all flattened themselves against the wall behind Gary, exchanged glances and _ping_ ed away as one. Kenny wondered if they were going to alert Mr. Sanderson about this, or if they'd just wanted to get somewhere, anywhere else, and feign obliviousness to the whole matter.

Gary watched them move off in silence. When they had, Kenny grabbed his arm. That made the older boy flinch very hard. "Gary. What. Happened?"

"Oh, that? With the taking the Fairies to Day Care? It's nothing. There's so much magic dust on everybody's skin that Betty thinks they're just regular, boring ol' human toddlers. It's nothing!"

"I meant with my sister in general. What happened to my sister? She didn't…" What was this hot, wet sensation on his face? Puzzled, Kenny lay his fingertip against a liquid dot that had formed near his eye. "She didn't recognize me. She didn't know who I was. She's forgotten me."

Gary's eyes flicked sideways, then came back. The smile was still on his face, but twitching at the topmost corners. Kenny braced one hand on the floor and held the other up to Gary. After several seconds of hesitation, his old friend pulled him up to his feet.

"Was it the Pixies? Jorgen? I dunno, maybe that Foop kid and some of the other Anti-Fairies? What did they do to my _sister_?"

Gary wrapped his arms around his head. "I-it's only temporary, I swear! Th-there was Rosebud, and Florida, and these alligators, and Pixie World, and Mr. Sanderson wouldn't help us, and sh-she got, um… There was a fight? It didn't go very well - the Head Pixie was there - and I'm fixing it! I am! We're, um, experiencing technical-wechnical difficulties at the moment. In her brainy-wainy. It'll all be over soon and there's nothing to worry about."

Kenny _hmph_ ed. "You don't have to make the 'scary' words child-friendly in front of me. I'm nineteen- I can handle the truth."

That brought Gary pause. "You're fourteen."

"Nineteen."

"How can you be nineteen?" Gary asked, all reasonable-voiced and, vaguely, there was a hint of talking-down in his words. Okay, maybe a few hints. "I'm only eighteen and a half, and I'm supposed to be four years older than you."

Kenny recoiled. "Did your head get screwed up too? I know how math works, Gary. You age a year each time the four seasons pass. Even chilling with my alien peeps, floating up in space without any trees or weather, I still follow a calendar. Am I small? Does this body look like it's fourteen?"

Gary wrinkled his nose like he'd never heard the term "peeps" before. The pair studied one another in silence. _Oh my smoof,_ Kenny found himself thinking, _he looks the same. No, he looks_ exactly _the same._

He felt sick. He didn't know exactly why. He just did. Something about the smell of magic permeating the air. Something about Gary's disbelieving stare. Something about… everything.

Kenny's eyes roamed around the office. They settled on a calendar resting on the desk beside the pencil sharpener and a pink laptop - one of those 'tear off one page a day' types of calendars. "Gary… What year is it?"

"2002," Gary answered without hesitation. "Or did you want it in the Fairy calendar? It's the Year of the Last… the Last… Well, I can't be expected to remember what it was exactly-wactly, but you get the idea. Oh, Last Berry- that was it. It's the Spring of the Last Berry. LS, 90, YoLB19. Yes: June 13th, 2002, exactly a week before the Fairy calendar turns to summer on June 20th. What?" When he saw Kenny's expression, he tipped his head, the soft blue tassel on his graduation cap bouncing against his dark cheek. "Am I wrong?"

"I dunno. Where I'm from, it's 2008."

"Well, well! I respect and support you. Haha, I don't even know you anymore, friend, but here on Earth it's 2002. I sing the counting song with the kids. Every day. For the last seven years. I think I know how my numbers go, Kenny. You've been away from humans for so long, you've probably forgotten."

"Ex _cuse_ you. Do you even _know_ how many ethereal planes of existence there are in our universe alone? Twenty-four. Why do you think we say days are twenty-four hours long when the sun never rises or sets in Fairy World? And I wasn't even counting neighboring dimensions." Kenny slapped his chest with an injured hand. "I'm recognized as the official guardian of the crossroads between Planes 5 and 6. I manage an intergalactic cash register. I've memorized the exchange rates for over fifteen different types of currency, and keep up on the information on a month-by-month basis and adjust for inflation accordingly. If one of us knows how numbers go, I think I have you beat. Now tell me, punk, how long ago did the Pixies throw their plan to use Flappy Bob to take over your world into action?"

"Um… Um, I think maybe three or four years ago. Maybe two. Maybe one. Huh." Gary scrunched up his nose. "It might have been this year, actually."

The fingers on Kenny's left hand tightened into his sore stomach. "Gary, think about that statement. Consider it. Think hard. Use logic. It doesn't make sense. It's _June_. The thirty-seven-year plan involving Flappy Bob occurred at the beginning of June too. I heard about it for months after the event. The news was everywhere. It was all people talked about. The Pixies _taking over Fairy World and biologically rewiring a hundred thousand magical beings to temporarily carry pixie genetics_ and get them shut out of all the automated systems so they could be individually monitored and have their permanent records, histories, behaviors, frequent location tendencies, past granted wishes, strengths, and weaknesses instantaneously updated in the Pixie World files was _kind of a massively big deal_."

"Yes! Now I remember. Oh, silly me!" Gary knocked on his own head with a chuckle. "It was six years ago. Almost exactly, too. But I guess it really doesn't matter. What were we talking about again?"

Kenny frowned. Reaching out, he grabbed his old friend's arm and shook it until Gary's wandering eyes snapped back to his. "Don't get distracted. Pay attention. Stay with me. Focus. So then what was your age? What did your official papers and stuff say? How old were you?"

A half sigh. "Well, Kenny-friend, since eighteen minus six is twelve, obviously I was twelve back then."

"But you wouldn't have been authorized to look after kids at a huge place like this at only age twelve. Gary, how long have you _been_ here?"

Now Gary just looked frustrated. He crossed his arms. "Why are you asking me all these tricky-wicky questions? It's 2002, and I'm going to be turning nineteen in early October. Being in Burger World has made you cuckoo up top in the attic-wattic. I think someone needs a nappy-wappy."

"I don't need a nappy-wappy!"

"That's just what a grouchy fourteen-year-old who needs a nappy-wappy would say." Gary opened the door to the office and motioned for the younger… well, the older boy to follow him down the hall. All Kenny could do was put a hand to his temple and scratch the hair above his right ear.

He sighed down at his rumpled red and white clothes. "Just… just point me to your kitchens and I'll shut up. I've gotta make some hamburgers, or I'm gonna lose my mind. I'll flip out. I'll go insane."

"Kenny, I'm pretty-witty sure you already have."


	21. (83) Only An Idea

_Summary:_ The new Head Pixie takes a curious interest in a lowly cubicle worker who wandered into a party. AU. I wrote a prequel, "Learn Your Place", but I might make a multi-chapter 'fic out of it instead of posting it here.

 _Characters:_ Reedfilter Rules!H.P., Reedfilter Rules!Sanderson

 _Rating:_ T

 _"Chronologically" Follows / Precedes:_ "Learn Your Place"(?) / "Refusal"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

 **A/N:** The title for this piece is quite literal: It's just a silly idea I had. This is actually one of the very first prompts I dwelt on, inspired by the fact that in "Fairy Idol", the Fairy media captioned a video shot of H.P. as "Sanderson's friend".

In this one-shot, they're not related and both grew up in a well-established Pixie society. So it's an alternate universe from my other works, but not necessarily AU from the show if you've been treating my pixie headcanons as AUs anyway. Consider it an idea I'd have explored if I hadn't stumbled across the _Wolbachia_ bacteria and the way it causes asexual reproduction among insects. Cool.

* * *

 **83\. Only An Idea** (Alternate universe; pre-series)

 _Year of Love; Winter of the Nurturing Cougar_

* * *

Oh, smoof- the hungover kid was waking up. Fergus stopped the microwave before it could beep, abandoned his oatmeal, and raced back to the table. In a very professional way, obviously, that most definitely did not involve knocking a folding chair over with his wing. He managed to seat himself perfectly still on a silver barstool, not a stitch of his gray suit out of place. He was sipping his coffee and examining the stocks page of a newspaper from five days ago by the time the smaller pixie sat up on the white couch, rubbing his uncovered eyes.

Stupid punk, wandering up to the C-level without an invitation. A quick glance into field-sight revealed that he had only twenty-five lines connecting him to the energy field, and no magical scabs indicating he'd ever given any away to his offspring. Subtract the three his own father had planted in him at birth… Multiply that by… He couldn't have even been 250,000 years old, or if he was, he was just entering that phase. That made him younger than most of the employees at Pixies Incorporated. Younger, and smaller. Possibly he was still an intern. His hair was flipped up at the front in a double cowlick, although it drooped more now than it had at last night's party after this long without gel. Their gazes – lavender-gray and stunning ocean turquoise – locked for a quarter of a wingbeat before the younger one's darted away.

Nailed it.

Whoever had trained this intern had done a good job. He sized up his situation quietly with his hands in his lap, turning his head, and only voiced his question once he was sure he didn't know the answer.

"Is that the stocks page of a newspaper from five days ago?"

"You're in the- What? Oh. Er, yes, I see it is. Sharp eyes."

The pixie looked on curiously. "What good is it now? I usually just throw mine out."

Ignoring him, Fergus folded the paper up and pushed it to the other side of the table. He allowed his fingertips to rest on it a moment longer. "Do you know where you are, and what you did?"

He toyed with the edge of his purple blanket. "I must admit, not entirely. That was a serious party last night. Was it the 'A' day in F.L.A.R.G.?"

"Close. That was a typical rave here at Pixies Inc. You got wasted on orange cream soda and chocolate wafer bars. I hope you're grateful to be over age of majority, so no one will press direct charges for your being sugarloaded. Here." Fergus tore off a strip of newspaper. "Do you chew? It's good for anxiety. But chew it; don't swallow, remember. The spittoon's on your left."

The pixie rubbed the back of his head before sticking the clump of paper in his mouth. "Thank you. I do feel rather slammed. And just… weird. Where am I, and who are you?"

"The C-level break room. Floor 18 of Headquarters. You really don't remember what happened?" That might be for the best.

"Mm… Nope. Or at least, not much of it. I think I heard that there was music up here and came wandering up to listen. I must have grabbed some cookies and a soda and gotten carried away. I humbly request the forgiveness of whoever was in charge. It won't happen again."

Fergus got up to get the other coffee mug he'd left on the counter beside the machine. If coffees and hangovers didn't go together, he and the random pixie would find out experimentally. "Hm. I seem to remember that you did like the fairyoke. I recognize the two peaks in your hair."

The unfamiliar pixie peeked beneath his blanket, then hissed through his teeth. "Did I fall asleep with a random damsel? That's not like me at all."

"Yes, if 'Did I-'"

"Oh my dust, I'm fired. How drunk was I? My match is going to wring my neck when she finds out. I could lose my wings for this. Oh my dust, this is so wrong."

Fergus snapped the intern's mouth closed with his glare alone. "I wasn't finished. Don't interrupt me, whelp. As I was saying, 'Yes, if Did I fall asleep with a damsel' equates to 'Was I so sugarloaded that I decided to strip naked when I went to the restroom and then pass out'. Why you chose to do that is your own business. To the best of my knowledge, you didn't sleep with any damsels, no. I ran across you while I was cleaning this morning, so I brought you out here and-"

"That means you saw me naked." He pressed both hands over his face. "Tell me my dome wasn't unhinged, at least."

He waited until the pixie had spat the chewed paste of paper from his mouth, then offered him the mug. "Would you let me finish? Tch. You're a Sanderson, aren't you? I don't believe it was open, but then again, I'm a bit hungover myself and my memories are foggy. I do remember you naked, yes, but I will smooth over it and tuck it away if you will."

Nod. Two fingers reached for business cards in a pocket that wasn't there. "My humble apologies. My name's Ennet. Ennet Sanderson."

"Figures," snorted Fergus. "You talk like one. I assume you're Kalahari's kid."

"That's right."

"The will o' the wisp crossbreed." The one soiled crease on their family. Fergus still found the concept fascinating. On top of conducting business meetings, overseeing trades and shipments, and speaking for their race as a whole on the global scale, one of the most important duties of the Head Pixie was to play matchmaker. Examining lineages. Calculating options. Finding patterns. Solving puzzles. Betrothing countless drakes and damsels at birth. Informing them of when and where they could breed. Studying the results. Determining if the pair had produced good offspring or if they ought to be reshuffled into the breeding pool and rearranged with a more promising mate. Black-haired pixies worked in Headquarters, blonds in the businesses of less importance, reds ran errands, browns did the cleaning… If an area was lacking, you simply had to start making matches and stamping breeding cards.

Anyway, Kalahari had broken the rules two and a half hundred thousand years ago. More pertinently, he'd conceived a nymph from their forbidden union. He'd had to be punished. Reedfilter had sliced off his wings entirely. But what exactly was it that had encouraged such a well-mannered drake to disobey instructions, placing his job and family's reputation on the line for a single cozy night with a damsel he couldn't keep? It was the question their species still couldn't seem to answer. Fergus had his suspicions, and they made him eye Kalahari's hungover son there on the couch with all the more interest.

"Must we discuss this, sir?" Ennet asked. "I'm not in the proper state of mind to defend my father's choices." He peered uneasily around the break room. Most evidence of the party had been cleared away, with only the refreshment table and its sugary temptations lingering in the far corner. Those stray crumbs and chocolate smears wouldn't be fun to rub from the carpet. "Do you have my clothes?"

"I imagine they're still where you left them in the bathroom. I suppose I'd better help you button your shirt." Fergus beckoned with his hand, but Ennet didn't get off the couch.

"But I'm naked. You'll see me if I get up."

"I already did, and I also don't care. But, stay there if you wish."

Ennet waited as the older pixie sat again, then cocked his head exactly thirty-one degrees to the right. "Aren't you going to bring me those clothes?"

"No," Fergus said through the next sip of coffee. "It's not my problem."

"But I need them," he whined.

"When you really want them, you'll get them. Life and work is all about responsibility."

"Okay," sulked the small pixie, staring into his own drink. He really was small- what did this kid eat? Earthworms? If he weren't so pinky-tan, Fergus would have assumed he was Alapin Wilcox (a confirmed fagigglyne addict, that one, and currently marked on the list of those who weren't to breed).

Fergus found his mind wandering back to the microwave with its cooling oatmeal, and to the subject of Kalahari's folly, and to lots of things. Refocusing his attention on that second part and what it might mean for his tentative theories, he prodded, "Have you enjoyed your time here at Pixies Inc., Sanderson? Any concerns you've considered addressing?"

"I like it here immensely better than school. Although, I worry sometimes that the company is moving in a poor direction. I've pulled out most of my stocks."

The older drake lifted both eyebrows at the bold statement. "A poor direction? How so?"

"I don't know, I just think the new Head Pixie's kind of a snatter, y'know? They say he really sucked up to Rani Reedfilter to get the company vice president job and then arranged for her to be killed, and that's how she ended up drowning."

The mug came down. "Is that so? What else do they say about him?"

Ennet shrugged, blinking sleepily, and at last raised his coffee to his lips. A stream of it spilled from the corner of his mouth. "That he slept with her when they weren't matched, mostly. The Head Pixie isn't supposed to keep a mate, but everyone on my floor is pretty sure she mothered his daughter. It's kind of obvious, because Emery has green eyes. You know how the old V.P. with the bad hand, Cecil Hawkins, got fired? Yeah, I've heard the new Head embezzled that money himself and then got him blamed for it."

"Goodness. That's a lot of accusations thrown on a single pixie."

"Yeah, but they're probably true. And he might even be a brownie-kisser."

Fergus rose to his wings with a brisk nod. "I appreciate your inside tips. Of course, work gossip only reflects poorly on you and your character. You seem to have forgotten your place. Your words will have to be taken into consideration when the next company meeting about turnovers and pink slips comes around."

The younger pixie groaned. "I didn't mean to say so much. I'm still hungover from the soda. Don't rat me out to the big boss; I can't afford to lose this job. Be a pal."

"In that case, I'd like to say I deeply regret to inform you – although I don't – that he already knows, punk." Fergus extended his hand. "Fergus Whimsifinado. Former company vice president and now entering his second month of heading Pixies Incorporated in the wake of Reedfilter's untimely death. Shame. The Sanderson name has always been a promising one in the company until now."

All at once, Ennet's wings stiffened and his throat went tight. His vision began to clear up, or at least from where the Head was floating. "I, uh… I didn't recognize you without the floppy gray hat or the clear glasses, sir."

"I would say it's funny how no one does. But then again," Fergus finished as he drew the latter from the table and set them on his nose, "I don't think you're funny."

Ennet's face remained expressionless in the practiced pixie way, except for the fact that his eyebrows slid up about a millimeter. "I'm so fired, aren't I?"

"Very fired. Unless you can convince me otherwise in" - he checked the clock - "one minute and twelve seconds that you're a worthy asset to the company. Your elevator pitch begins now."

"I… Er, I…" Ennet massaged his temples. His lines must have been fritzing again, because the energy field was tugging in his direction. The taste in the air turned from sweet purple to sour pink to spicy green around them. "I get all my projects done on time. I've never missed a deadline in my life. I've formed friendly connections with my coworkers and been told that I bring a positive atmosphere to the floor. Um… My damsel says she's proud to have been matched with me regardless of my contaminated blood, and that we'll still breed a good nymph when the Head- er, when you give us the okay. Even if my mother was a will o' the wisp, I'm a pixie and fiercely loyal to the company. Nothing will keep me from proving that. I… I have a record deal. I sing songs. I've made mix tapes. They're good?"

Fergus turned his back. "Time's up."

"Please don't tell my dad," blurted Ennet. "I'll do anything."

The word hung between them in the air. After tapping his chin for a moment, Fergus rotated back around and pulled his barstool closer. "Is that so? I like the sound of that word, 'anything'."

Ennet looked like he really, really wanted his shades back now. He moved his finger towards his face as though pushing the lenses closer to his blue-green eyes, only to find that they weren't there. His small hand closed into a loose fist and sank back into his lap. "I- I mean, anything within reason."

"What is 'within reason' for you?"

"Um… Mostly everything that doesn't involve me having to dive underwater or lift a blade to my core and kill myself, I guess. I'm not sure I could go through with that."

"Is that all? How dull, and not in the good way. I was hoping you would make this more interesting. So then you would kill someone else, if I asked you to? Say, a particularly irritating fairy."

"You're the boss," he said, puzzled. "I work for you. Following your orders is mandatory."

The Head Pixie scratched his cheek. "Yes. And how are you about… favors?"

"Like errands? Sure, I don't mind the demeaning errand drake intern chores. I can even do redhead things. One of my half-sisters is a redhead."

"Come now. I meant a different kind of favor."

Ennet's face pinkened. Aha- now they were getting somewhere. He clenched his blanket in his fists. "Oh. Erm, I don't do those kinds of favors for anyone or anything."

Fergus leaned forward with his chin cupped in his palm. Still in monotone, he asked, "What if I were to make you vice president of the entire company in return?"

He shook his head very hard and fast. Poor little thing- he was so nervous, he was actually breathing through his mouth. And his expelled effervescence was warm. "I think that's kind of against the rules, sir. I've been matched. You know. To a damsel and stuff. That's how it works."

"The Head Pixie makes the rules, Sanderson."

"Oh. That's right. I guess you do." Now Ennet looked confused. Conflicted. "Er. I don't know then. May I have more context?"

Fergus nodded. "I'll restate. What would you do if sexual favors to the boss were against the rules, but you would get a promotion out of it?"

"Then I wouldn't do it. It's against the rules."

"Yes, you said that. I'm curious. What would you choose - _choose_ \- if your Head Pixie asked you to, but there wasn't necessarily a promotion attached?"

"I'm confused. This doesn't make sense. We can't have a nymph together. Why are we doing this?"

"That wasn't the question. Your response is…?"

"Um… I'd follow the Head Pixie's instructions?"

The older pixie watched him for a full minute before slowly pulling away. "Hmm. Good job. That was a loyalty test, and you passed. I like you. But, you certainly don't need to concern yourself with those panicked thoughts you're clearly having. Don't jump like that- I can pick up on that, panic. Fascinating concept too. But contrary to the apparently popular belief, I worked hard for my position, and there was no sleeping with Reedfilter involved. Emery gets her eyes from my grandsire. I intend to hold to the no-favors policy we have all been instructed to abide by. Besides, it's like you said: You have a match. You wouldn't want to get your wings cut off like your father, would you? I thought not. Now then. What's your current position?"

"… Sitting up?"

"In the company, Sanderson."

"… Not fired?"

Then Fergus snapped his fingers. "I remember. You're only a cubicle pixie. Kalahari mentioned you once when he and I had lunch together with Reedfilter and Columbine Longwood." He slid his eyes over the couch. "Hmm… I think you're probably overdue for a promotion."

"Wait, what?"

"Don't stammer. I'm going to move you from the tenth-floor cubicles to the complaints department on Floor 2."

Ennet hugged his blanket. "I'm confused and scared."

"Then it's settled." _Ping_ ing in a pen and notebook, Fergus made a mark on his pad as if scratching off this task. In actuality, he simply drew a line for the effect it had on making Ennet squirm his wings.

"Oh my dust." Ennet bolted upright and grabbed his arm as the notebook _ping_ ed away again. "Please, sir- don't!"

"You don't want the promotion?" the Head Pixie asked incredulously.

"Yes, I do! I mean, I've been wanting to get out of the cubicles for millennia. But sir, how am I supposed to explain to everyone that I, a humble cubie, mysteriously got a promotion after a night spent partying with you and the other C-level pixies?"

"What?"

"Even though we aren't supposed to question the Head Pixie's decisions, people are still going to talk about how I got promoted," he whispered. "Especially if some of them saw me, um…" He gestured to his unclothed body beneath the blanket.

"Hm? Oh. Oh. Yes." Fergus ran his fingers through his white hair. Only the occasional dark streak still showed near the roots these days. "Right. That's a thing that people would think, of course. Hmm…" Again, he studied the smaller pixie. Then he stood and untied his tie. "We may as well give them something to talk about, I suppose."

" _What?_ "

"I'm changing the rules, Sanderson."

"Oh, no." His voice began to slip out of monotone. Inflections and emphases ran rampant across each phrase. He scooted along the white couch. "Sir- Sir, I'm very uncomfortable with this. I haven't even paired with my current match. Do you remember that time about a month back when you told us to, but the pregnancy test came back negative? W-well, I lied, sir. We didn't do anything at all."

The tie coiled itself around the abandoned coffee mug. "Sanderson. Rules."

"I'm confused. Why do I have to do this? You and I can't have a nymph. What's the purpose of that kind of interaction? Sir!"

Heh. There it was- the thought made him anxious. Now that really _was_ interesting, and in a very good way. Fergus sat on his barstool again, feeling an emotion: smug. "That was another test, specifically geared towards you. Although I would have preferred less emotion in your response, I'm intrigued by the fact that you still acted hesitant towards the suggestion despite the fact that you had indeed confirmed your willingness to follow the rules. When I saw the flicker in your eyes as you answered earlier, I suspected you would. How curious. You don't find many pixies who will blatantly contradict themselves that way once the situation is no longer hypothetical. It must be that will o' the wisp blood in your veins."

"What?"

"You're an independent thinker, aren't you? You with your music, you who wandered up to this party without an invitation. Ennet Sanderson is an anomaly. Evidently, you're not so obedient that you can't think through these things logically and determine when instructions don't make sense, much like a Head Pixie would." Fergus leaned back. "You're very interesting, Sanderson; I'm glad we're having this talk. I do like you."

"How do you like me, sir?" Ennet asked uncertainly.

"Enough that I think I'll up that complaint department promotion to Longwood's personal assistant. But we're definitely going to have to discuss that issue of you and your match not mating as per instruction. I'll schedule a time for us to talk when you're in a more presentable condition."

Ennet peeled his fingers down his cheeks. "I don't know what's going on anymore. Please, sir. If I could just take my clothes and get out of here, and if we could forget this meeting and the party ever happened, that would be much appreciated. My humble request."

"Alright. You drive a hard bargain. I'll promote you to head of the entire complaints department. That's my final offer."

The younger pixie opened his mouth, then closed it again. Fergus raised his eyebrows. "Oh, you like that one, I see. I wondered if you might."

Ennet folded his arms so his hands clutched the opposite shoulders. His wings fluttered against the couch cushions. "Maybe… Maybe we could delay that promotion, sir? It isn't as though I'm not grateful. I am. And I would really, really be interested in that job. Surely there's some way we could work this out? Maybe stage an attack by anti-fairies and I could save your life somehow or something? But give it time so no one spreads rumors? I deal with enough of those already."

"Ha ha. Ha ha." Fergus almost smiled as he adjusted his glasses. "That's rather endearing. You think you could save my life if it were in danger?"

"If that job is on the line, then yes. Well, and you're my boss. It's my job. So, that too. Can I rearrange my answer so that part's first?"

"What's so attractive?"

"… I like your purple eyes?"

Fergus rolled them. "About the complaints department, Sanderson."

He shifted. "Oh. Well, my dad used to work in that position, a long time ago. He means the world to me, and I guess I just want to live up to my family name and make him proud. The good part of my family name, anyway."

Ah, yes. The kid _was_ a crossbreed. It showed in his wings if one knew how to look for it, and in his pointed nose. Crossbreeds weren't so looked down upon among the Fairies, but in Pixie World, it earned him sideways glances and sharp remarks behind his back. Especially when the mother was a will o' the wisp, of all things. Fergus tried to remember why they'd even hired him. Entirely for his black hair, most likely- Where else were they supposed to put him?

"Mmhm. Well, Sanderson, unfortunately it looks like you'll be having to tell your father that you won't be getting that job. This whole conversation was a mind game I decided to play while stalling before my morning in the office of combing through dull files. You see, while I do find you somewhat intriguing, you've been breaking rules. As fascinating as it is that you, like your father before you, went against orders to mate with your match, the fact remains that you have in the past disturbed the peace with your music, you acted quite negligent last night both before and after you were sugarloaded, and you did of course participate in that unflattering gossip about me, and I don't approve of that." Fergus folded his glasses and looked up again. "You're totally fired."

Ennet stared at him, and then a slow grin began to creep over his typical poker face. "Oh, I get it. This is another test."

"Sanderson, I'm serious. I want your ID badge on my desk by three this afternoon. Consider last Tuesday's pay to be your final check. You and your match will be receiving a summons within the week. Otherwise, bye-bye."

"Riiight." He clicked a finger gun and winked. "Sure thing, boss. I'll be seeing you later."

Fergus narrowed his eyes. "There is no 'later' if you're still daydreaming of that complaints department desk. You. Are. Fired."

"I'm fired up about this new opportunity too, H.P." He saluted in passing with two fingers and, with the blanket tight around him, wandered into the bathroom to search for his discarded gray clothes. There didn't appear to be a point in arguing with him when he was still hungover like this. Fergus could only hope the kid would find his damsel or another pitying coworker to kiss him and clear his mind with level-headed pixie saliva before the workday went on for too long.

Still, it was awfully cute that he actually showed up the following morning. The Head Pixie got curious, and kept a thoughtful eye on him from afar. After all, why turn away free labor?

Of course, Ennet just _had_ to arrive in the office of the Head of Complaints on Friday and insist that he'd been promoted. This then prompted the steamed Head of Complaints to invite himself into his boss's office demanding an explanation.

His name was Markell Longwood, son of Columbine Longwood, who was definitely not a damsel Fergus was in the mood for dealing with… ever. Only the best for her freckle-faced son. After a long moment of awkward silence spent trying to think of ways to explain that well, yes, he had technically given that position to Mr. Sanderson, he decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to promote Mr. Longwood directly to vice president of the entire company. It wasn't difficult to skim back through the records and find something obscure that he could fire the former one for.

Markell clicked with his new position too well to ever demote him back down once this whole mess blew over. Ennet's fate remained up in the air. He wasn't necessarily stunning in the complaints department, but he wasn't particularly bad either. He was simply average in all respects: He worked at a normal speed, he took the normal amount of sick days, he appeared at all the normal business meetings, he complained about and praised the normal things, and his match was a normal damsel with whom he never got in trouble sneaking kisses with on work hours like Markell had an irritating tendency to with his. If one ignored Ennet's lust for introducing the quiet building to rap music, he was really quite the average pixie. Certainly nobody to attract anyone's attention.

And yet…

Fergus leaned back in his swivel chair, flipping through a stack of summary reports. "You smoofing snatter," he muttered to himself. Handwriting was one of those things that Da Rules didn't allow anyone to interfere with magically due to the potential signature forging chaos, and _Dear King Nuada_ if Ennet didn't have the most perfect letters he'd ever borne witness to in his life. He looped the tops of his lowercase 'a's and swirled the bottoms of his 'g's like a typeset, and every letter aligned exactly with the others, except for some odd reason his 'x's, which tended to look more like 't's. Still, that could be forgiven. Oh, that little pixie had no idea what spell he'd cast over his superior.

He was still fired, though. The paychecks went out at the end of the month, and Ennet's wasn't with them. Puzzled, he came in and questioned whether it had been lost in transaction. Fergus knit his fingers and rested his chin on them. He stared across his desk at that young square face, so full of innocence and trust.

"Actually, no," he found himself saying after a moment long enough to make Ennet sweat. "That was another of my tests. You passed again. I'll write yours up right now." So he did, and handed it over, and the pixie thanked him graciously and began to leave.

"Oh, and Sanderson?"

Ennet glanced back over his shoulder at the door. Fergus rubbed his chin. "Keep working hard, and you might even be promoted to company vice president one day."

He did that free-thinking trademark thing of his, with the clicking and the finger guns. This time, Fergus did it back at him. The door shut.

The Head Pixie's gaze trailed across his desk, where he'd left a newspaper from five days ago. It wasn't open to the stocks page, but to a very different one that described the gritty, gruesome details of Kalahari Sanderson's death in an accident with a limousine at the corner of Gray and Dull. The black and white photo was one of a small, cowlicked pixie leaning against a street lamp with dust running through his fingers and down his unwrinkled white shirt.

His mother was a will o' the wisp, evident by the jabbing point in the upper corner of his squarish wings that made them look more like rhombuses. Long gone, of course, and undoubtedly before Kalahari had even learned he was pregnant.

It wasn't the only known case of breeding beyond the matching rules in present-day times. Fergus had never known his own mother either. He knew only that he had non-pixie blood flowing beneath his skin, and it urged him to act more drastically than any of his full-blooded coworkers. He could _think_. He could _choose_ not to follow orders if he didn't want to. He could take _risks_ \- he had worked hard to secure this position, after all. None of the others would have dared to pull all the tricks with Reedfilter and Hawkins that he had. Similarly, they could hardly grasp at the concept that he'd done any of it. His crossbred genes had earned him many a snide remark before he'd reached this untouchable position and cowed them all. Because they'd mocked him, young Fergus Whimsifinado had thrown all his life into gaining their respect. It had all paid off in the end. That same forbidden blood had proven more valuable to him than anyone could ever have guessed.

But the difference between Ennet and himself was that his own father was still alive. What might that be like? To be engaged in casual conversation with Ambrosine on the way to work, and half a beat later float there in a daze as a vehicle swerved, a monotone voice muttered an "Ow", then watch him disintegrate into nothing? With not even his clothes or his spectacles remaining in the dust as a parting memento?

"Hm," was all the older pixie said at first. He tapped the cap of his pen against his teeth and straightened the newspaper on his desk. "I like this one. I'm definitely going to have to watch him. Here we have a pixie with an absent mother, who squirms away from every damsel he's ever been matched with, and who has just lost the father whom he referred to as his entire world. I wonder…"


	22. (80) Hidden

_Summary:_ Foop is a baby in jail; Caudwell is a therapist who begins to notice some oddities in his behavior and mental development.

 _Characters:_ Foop, Hiccup, Caudwell, Jorgen

 _Rating:_ K

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Shouldn't Have Survived" / "Entire World"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **80\. Hidden** (Two weeks after "Anti-Poof")

 _Year of Breath; Summer of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

"Might I ask, exactly how necessary was it for me to put on the black lipstick?"

"I like it when we wear the stripes of war paint on our cheeks!"

Thin wings crinkled. "Yes, sir. You wear them well. Thank you for sharing your supply with me. So, you keep him hidden all the way at the back of this passage?"

"Yes. He is the most dangerous prisoner we currently have in all of Abracatraz, small square-head." The key twisted in one of the locks. A beaded curtain fluttered amidst clicking and clacking. Kitnut wood, broken seashells, nicked glass, and cheap plastic. Foop picked up another purple crayon and ignored it. Instead, he riveted his focus on the approaching figures. One of those voices belonged to Jarhead Jorgen, of course; he was Keeper of Da Rules and all that; a large muscular fellow who always seemed to juggle ten additional jobs if ever his rule-break pager wasn't beeping at his wrist. Judge, jury, and warden and, potentially, maybe even executioner.

The second figure was one that Foop couldn't yet put a claw to. Granted, there were probably at least a hundred beings in the universe he didn't know as he was, after all, only thirteen days old. He just knew he'd never met _this_ one.

The pulsing signal that Jorgen inadvertently released into the magical energy field gleamed like suns against rocky moons. Full of drumbeats, police car sirens, smashed bricks tumbling to the pavement, clashing silverware- the storm of it gave the little anti-fairy an ouchy headache.

But that second pulse was smaller. It sounded different. Light. Hovering. Buzzing. _Fluttery_ \- that was the exact word his thin blue hand had been grasping for. The small figure sounded like a thumb zipping across a stack of post-it notes. The sound was almost identical to the tearing velcro noise he'd grown familiar with after multiple visits made by random fairy guards and caretakers, but it was sharper too. Firmer. No nonsense. Set in its ways. Content.

How Foop knew what post-it notes or velcro sounded like, or what they even were, well… he knew them the same way he understood how to speak with near-flawless grammar at his young age. He had been born of his parents' minds, with the best of the knowledge each one of them held; for his mother, this had been her ability to identify and recall objects, and his father, his linguistic awareness.

He listened as they came nearer, trying to appear as though he wasn't. Jorgen the fairy. Mystery figure. Jorgen the fairy. Mystery figure.

The mystery figure, when he finally came into view, was quite square in the face and deeply, deeply tan in the skin. Burned near red. Black hair. Gray suit. Sounded like cashmere when it rippled. At first glance, Foop thought his dark eyes were swollen like an insect's. It would be several minutes into the conversation before he determined with his poor vision that aforementioned "eyes" were actually glasses tinted dark. Someone, apparently, liked to keep the windows to their soul a secret.

"I will leave you to him," Jorgen announced, and withdrew up the hall. Out of sight, perhaps, but not out of range of Foop's sharp hearing, even if heavy doorway things clattered shut behind him. Waiting and listening. The little anti-fairy ground his fangs and set his back to them both.

"Hello, Anti-Poof Nebula Anti-Cosma-Anti-Fairywinkle."

Foop refused to grace the greeting with a response. He drew another circle on his latest paper, then slashed his claws through it until it tore to streamers.

The mystery figure tapped the glass pane - cruel, invisible, tangible glass pane - that separated them from one another. Dull thuds rang against the baby's eardrums and stapes. "My name is Mr. Caudwell Mayfleet. I work at Wish Fixers and I've been assigned to act as your therapist until further notice. I'm not a bragger, but they chose me because as far as pixies go, I'm the best at talking feelings."

"Don't fib to me," Foop sneered, still facing the other direction, but now plugging one of his tall ears. He pulled another paper across the rough stone floor towards him. "I'm no idiot. Your imprint in the energy field sounds too young to have gone through all those years of necessary school."

Enter one (1) clicking sound. Definitely a pen. Roller ball, .7 millimeters in diameter. The ink splashed like liquid thunder as this newcomer - Mr. Caudwell Mayfleet the pixie who worked at Wish Fixers - lowered the tip to the notebook in his lap. Plastic cover. Average quality. Perforated edges along the pages, by the skip in the faint rustle when deliberate fingers turned each of them one at a time and in near silence. Bound with a wire spiral. The glue crinkled in a way that suggested it had been applied a long time ago, as though perhaps the book had been stuffed away on a shelf or in a drawer for a long time until reluctant fingers had tugged it out. "That's not important," Caudwell said. "This was always my destiny and my internship began young. I learned from one of the best. Let's talk."

Foop remained silent, but his ears twitched. Mr. Caudwell Mayfleet the pixie had not brought a chair. Instead, he hovered almost a meter above the blue-gray stone. Higher than an Anti-Fairy speaking to him would have done, but still lower than your typical Fairy. His wings were quite strange. They didn't beat nearly as fast as a fairy's. Not at all. Instead, they sounded as though they churned in circles even more than Binky's did.

"Jorgen said you drank all your orange juice yesterday. That's very good. I must admit, it's long been fascinating to me to that Anti-Fairies don't need to drink milk after birth. The Seelie Court can't digest anything else until they're weaned around the time they shed their exoskeleton."

With one fist on his square jaw, Foop began to color the yellow crown of the fairy he was drawing.

"I brought you some more juice. I brought apple and grape too, just so you would have options. Would you prefer a red cup or a green cup?"

"Don't patronize me!" Foop grabbed the nearest alphabet block and launched it at Caudwell with all his young strength. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten again that just because he couldn't see the glass wall that caged him, it didn't mean it wasn't there, or that objects were able to pass through it the same way light waves and sound could. The block crashed and bounced away. Caudwell didn't even flinch, except with his pinky.

"Alright. The juice option is still on the counter if you change your mind."

"Well, listen to the nicey-nice little pixie with his quaint book of tattle-tale scribbles. Oh, come on! You aren't fooling anyone with that sappy 'Fool the pup into believing he has control of the situation' routine! That's the oldest trick there is on the headstone!"

Caudwell did not shrug, did not dip his head, did not write a note, did not show any sign of irritation at all. "Okay. No juice. Still, there is another fact about Anti-Fairies that I find interesting. I've always been told that your surnames come from your mothers."

"What do you think?" Foop actually didn't know if the answer to that question was a yes or a no, but he did understand enough to recognize that he didn't care.

"And yet, that leaves me wondering, how did you end up with the Anti-Fairywinkle name? Or the Anti-Cosma one, for that matter? They should have been lost long ago by drakian ancestors in the same way ours kept them. No Seelie Courter I've ever met can explain the intricate specifics of your system. How exactly does that work? Do you know, perchance?"

Foop felt his mind wandering as he groped for a third crayon, this one red. He'd switched the purple and yellow to his other hand, but had never let go of them. Wouldn't that be nice if he could slip away from this nightmare, just allow himself to fade while some other part of his mind remained active to answer Caudwell's pestering questions?

The pixie craned his neck, at the same time picking up the speed of his churning wings. "May I see what you're drawing?"

"I don't see why it's any business of yours. However, it wouldn't do for a masterpiece such as this one to go to waste untouched by admiring eyes." Foop picked up his picture with his claws and basked in it for a moment, then floated over to show it to Caudwell. He misjudged the distance and bumped his hands against the glass wall, but he concealed his mistake well enough, and held up the drawing so the pixie could see. It was a self-portrait. Er… that is to say, it was an image of his counterpart that he had whipped together from memory. He'd drawn a lot of them over the last two weeks, and he was getting fairly good.

"Hm. As I suspected. You're still in your period of egocentrism."

"Why, thank you. I am rather incredible, aren't I?"

Caudwell's thin, almost smug smile was very patient (Foop was very proud of himself for recognizing it, given that he had to squint hard to make it out, in addition to recognizing that facial expressions could be important in conversations). "That's a good guess, but the incorrect definition. I didn't mean 'egotistical', or even high in self-esteem, actually. I just meant that you're showing your picture to me backwards. The front is facing you, but you've pointed the blank side towards me. Despite your clearly advanced level of intellect, it would seem that your cognition has not yet fully developed; I can't see what you can."

Foop's round nose twitched. He looked again at his crude picture, with Poof's enormous purple eyes and thick lashes staring back at him. "What do you mean? It's right here. Are you stupid?"

"Why don't we pit you against a basic developmental test, just so you and I can gauge where you stand. Is that alright by you?"

"You're getting paid by the hour, aren't you?"

"Yes, but that doesn't concern you." To Foop's shock then, he _poof_ ed himself into the cell. Er… " _ping_ "ed, maybe, if one were to guess from the high trilling noise that accompanied his scattered teleportation cloud. After Caudwell had swatted off a few of the clingier traces of vapor and dust, he crouched a bit and held out his upturned palm. A single black die with red spots rested in the center.

"Is this one of those trick games where I'm supposed to channel my inborn abilities as an Anti-Fairy to manipulate the number my roll lands on?"

"No. The fact that it's a die is inconsequential, really. I just want you to try picking it up."

Foop snorted and did so with ease. When Caudwell asked for it back, he chucked it over his shoulder and pretended it had slipped from his grasp.

"That's fine. I have more." The pixie drew another die from his pocket and held it out like the first. "Please pick this up and pass it from one hand to the other."

"… I'm going to have to ask for more specific instructions."

"Hold the die first in one hand, then switch it to the other."

"How do I do that?"

"That's what you'll demonstrate to me. Go ahead."

Foop brought the black and red cube close to his other palm, then tipped his hand to spill the die into it. It rebounded off his fingers and clattered across the hard stone floor. Flustered, he plucked it up and made another attempt. After that one too failed, he cleared his throat and glanced away. "It would appear you've brought me a loaded die. It doesn't work."

Caudwell tipped his head. "That's curious. You switched hands earlier, with the crayons."

"Did I? I don't remember doing that."

"Hmm… I'll have to look into this hidden response of yours. Can I ask you now to show me whether or not you perform the A-not-B search error?"

"I'm always up for showing off," he sniffed.

"In that case, slide me that jack-in-the-box near your foot, please." Once Foop had kicked it roughly in his direction, Caudwell took off his gray suit coat and lay it over the box. Then he spread out Foop's blanket (polyester, cotton, fleece) beside it and shifted away. "All right. Go find it."

"How dumb do you think I am?" Foop flipped up the jacket to reveal the blue and black jack-in-the-box, which he then picked up and hurled at the wall because he felt like it. Caudwell retrieved it and replaced it under his jacket once more.

"Okay. Now where is it?"

Same place. Foop scowled at the wall as the pixie placed the toy beneath his blanket.

"Again, if you would."

Foop's short attention span and slippery patience snapped in the same moment. He kicked off from the ground, latched onto Caudwell's collar, and twisted it hard. "Something is _seriously_ wrong with you! I'm not a baby anymore. I am an intelligent being! You make a mockery of me with your silly parlor games!"

"Please retrieve the jack-in-the-box, Anti-Poof."

"Oh my smoke! It's right here, you insufferable paperweight!" So saying, Foop ripped Caudwell's jacket from the floor.

… to reveal that the stone floor was bare beneath it.

"What?" Both hands clapped to the sides of his square head. "What is this trickery? I don't understand. Where did it go? It was hidden right here last time."

"Maybe you could consider checking beneath your blanket."

"I fail to see how that's going to help me. That's ridiculous. I'm beginning to think that you're the one who should spend your days locked up in solitary confinement." The baby pointed at the ground. "Why are you not panicking? It's _gone_. And that was my favorite toy."

Caudwell leaned over and took Foop's dark blue blanket into his arms. When he did, the shiny plastic outsides of the jack-in-the-box glinted. It must have been teleported under there when he wasn't watching.

"Party magic tricks," Foop muttered.

"You're going thinningcore with stress," the pixie noted. "Let me try a few more things, very quick, and we're done."

"Fine, fine. Do what you will with me. At least it's a change of pace from sitting in here by myself." It could be a lonely existence at times, loathe as he was to admit it.

With a nod, Caudwell took Foop's body in his hands and lay him on his back. His leathery wings scrunched. Then the pixie knelt over him, lightly pinching the pup's sides with his knees. "W-what are you doing?" Foop stuttered, balling his small blue hands into fists.

"Testing your Babkin reflex," said the pixie, taking up those same hands by the wrists.

"Th-this is harassment! I have rights! I want out!"

"You can relax," he soothed as he uncurled Foop's fingers. "I'm a trained professional."

"Oh, because that's so reassuring in this type of context. _Help!_ Jorgen, I'm being assaulted by a trained professional! Wailing sounds! Panicked crying! _You're not helping!_ "

Caudwell pressed his thumbs into Foop's palms as the anti-fairy squirmed. After perhaps ten seconds, he appeared to be satisfied with whatever it was he was in search of, and perched back on his heels. Once the pressure on his chest was gone, Foop scrambled up and withdrew behind the nearest stack of alphabet blocks. Who could have guessed that the pixie had a hidden sadistic side?

"You're a sick, sick man," he hissed, "and for this, you will pay. I don't know who you really think you are, but you're not the type of person I can stand to be around."

"In that case, you can sit for this next bit. I have some flashcards I want to show you."

Foop ignored him for the first three minutes, but finally wandered over because it was something to do. Although, he regretted it soon enough. After what seemed to be only forty-five seconds of staring at cards, he zoned out for the rest of the session… something about schemas and colors and fruit. Something about, "Which jar has more water?" and "Which row has more coins?" When he finally blinked and looked around again, Foop realized that he was clutching a red sippy cup filled with apple juice. How did that happen?

He dropped it and glanced over to find that Caudwell had left the cell, and Jorgen was just returning. The pixie turned his back to Foop as the muscular fairy strode over, boots clomping. "Time is finished. Pixies, out. It is my turn now to communicate with the square bat child."

"Are my two hours up already, Jorgen? I hadn't noticed. Ahem. As far as his development goes, barring the absolute megalomaniac superiority complex, he appears to be functioning normally for an Anti-Fairy of his age. Then, a Fairy would have lost the Babinski reflex by this point, but he'll keep that all his life given that once he sheds his exoskeleton, it's wired in him to begin his life of hanging upside-down."

Foop narrowed his eyes. Jorgen was drinking up every word Caudwell spoke, and Caudwell of course wasn't looking at him.

He clenched his claws. It would be so easy.

Keeping his wings tucked against his back, he slid along the wall of his cell, creeping ever so softly, perfectly, as their exchange continued.

"Yes, and that's all right too. Make sure he gets plenty of folate. That's _crucial_ for healthy Anti-Fairy development due to the fact that they technically subsist entirely off their own DNA. Orange juice, beets, and peanut butter are all good sources that a young pup should find attractive enough. I might also recommend snacks of grasshoppers and termites given that the anti-fairy patron is the Mexican free-tailed bat, and they're insectivorous."

"My father said we're fruit bats," Foop interrupted, still poised against the wall. Caudwell barely glanced at him.

"Then your father was wrong."

"Are you calling Drake High Count Julius Anti-Cosmo Anti-Lunifly-Anti-Cosma-Anti-Fairywinkle stupid now?" Foop didn't think much of his father – bit of a coward, that twitching old man – but he found himself offended nonetheless. After all, they were related by blood, and they both carried the same surname there at the end, so in a way, whatever people thought of his father, they thought of him too.

"No, not stupid. I'm only saying that that he lied to you because he's in denial. Has been hiding it forever."

"Denial?" he echoed, not entirely sure what the word meant. Caudwell must have interpreted his question as disbelief.

"Oh, come _on_. When was the last time anyone actually saw Anti-Cosmo eat a sprite?" Caudwell rolled his head as if his pupils were making the same motion beneath his tinted glasses, then faced Jorgen one more time. "Give it a month and his cognitive abilities should mature to the point where he'll be able to recognize himself in a mirror, and he should start using gestures such as shaking his head to mean 'No' and generally having more advanced fine motor skills around that time as well. We only need to be worried if he starts to lag behind the norm, which is a serious possibility given that he's back here essentially in solitary confinement. Between what I've observed today and what you told me before we started, I have my suspicions about his blanking-out periods, but only time will prove them right or wrong."

As the last word left his mouth, Foop pounced on his snooty therapist. _Thunk!_

"… And you may want to do something about that glass wall problem," Caudwell observed, peering down at Foop over the rims of his shades.

Jorgen just laughed. "I like to watch the Anti-Fairies do that. It brings them pain and reminds them they are puny."

Foop rolled from his rear over to his stomach and then to his feet, muttering incoherently to even himself as he stormed back to his crayons.

He'd half-hoped but half-doubted that that would be the end of it. Still, he had a plan prepared in the back of his mind for when Caudwell showed up, which happened to be the following morning. Another Friday, if he remembered correctly. All Anti-Fairies were born on Friday the 13th. He was June 13th, in the Spring of the Last Berry. One week before summer.

So after Caudwell floated in on June 27th, two weeks after his birth, Foop sat near the front of his cell calmly playing Turf War with a purple boat and a stuffed giraffe. "Hello, Mayfleet. Jorgen wanted me to let you know that your services will no longer be needed today, or ever, thank you, and to show yourself out. Good-bye."

"My paycheck says otherwise." The pixie, still on the far side of the glass, sat in a white plastic chair that Jorgen had dragged in for him early that morning. "I understand that you don't want to be here, but you don't have a choice. Not in the state you're in right now, anyway."

"Do whatever you want with me, flat-head. I can't be broken."

"But you can be rehabilitated, and that's why I'm here. Let's work together and get you out of this place, okay?"

Vaguely intrigued by the prospect of escaping Abracatraz but refusing to let it show, Foop tightened his grip on the boat. Caudwell rested his hand on a thin, pale yellow thing in his lap that didn't quite assimilate into any of Foop's pre-categorized schemas. "I was wondering if you would be willing to tell me about this obsession you have with your counterpart."

"Ha! You act as though that's a difficult request rather than a deep-seeded loathing I could blather on about until this rotting prison fell around me. Poof is a selfish, spoiled, crybaby of a brat who doesn't know how to take a hit, and he's round and ugly and I will bring him DEATH!"

"Why do you want to hurt him? Has he ever acted out against you?"

"He didn't have to. He sickens me. Everyone loves him, and he eats it up. There is no real reason for him to be so popular. I refuse to share my spotlight with someone of that sort. If there's going to be one Fairykind baby on television, I would much prefer it to be me. _Foop!_ " He broke into maniacal laughter there at the end, and then gave himself hiccups and fell over.

Over the following week, Caudwell showed up each morning and would stay for hours, droning on about facts and reflexes and averages and Foop's inherited destiny as heir to the High Count seat, and asking question after question until he floated away again, with the anti-fairy jeering about his sunglasses or the circular motions of his square wings or his terrible taste in hats all the way down the hall.

Foop grew bored with him ("habituated" was the word the pixie used) and after awhile went back to coloring in the corner and choosing not to acknowledge his presence whatsoever. In fact, he was so good at ignoring Caudwell, that sometimes he forgot he was there at all. Some days Foop even forgot that he himself was there in that cell at all. His thoughts would wander, he'd drift off to sleep, in and out, in and out, sometimes more frequently throughout the morning, and other times for periods that seemed to last mere wingbeats.

"Foop," Caudwell said on Friday, "I want to tell you something that might be very important."

"You can talk all you like, you insignificant smudge. No one's stopping you."

Caudwell lowered his pen. "I'm technically not supposed to officially diagnose you until you're at least six months old, but it would seem to me that you show all the signs of having dissociative identity disorder."

"Do I?" Foop asked, mostly disinterested.

"That means it's highly likely you have a second personality. It's hidden, but definitely there."

He twirled one end of the long black fur beneath his nose. "And I care because?"

"It means you aren't always in control of yourself, at least not entirely. It's very interesting, though not particularly uncommon for an Anti-Fairy."

Foop's mind began to whirl. He grabbed at the concept and pulled. "Yes- Yes, that's precisely it! I'm not so bad! It's him! He whispers in my ear and tells me to do bad things- Yes, that is definitely what I go through every day, and if I don't do these bad things, he hurts me. It's him. You should let me go. I'm innocent! I was framed! Cry, cry, weeping sounds."

Caudwell chuckled with a dry, "Ha, ha". He said, "Your mother must have watched too many movies while she was forming your lifesmoke. That's not how this works. That's schizophrenia, but you aren't showing those symptoms. Dissociative identity disorder occurs when a very young mind has been placed under a great deal of stress, and the being in control of the mind - that's you - refuses to accept their stressful circumstances and wants to split away from reality and leave a replacement or 'imaginary friend' to cover for them."

Foop stared back at the pixie. His wings had lifted higher and higher as they listened, and the clawed tips were now scratching at his pointed ears.

"Sound familiar? You would have been very young. You're still in your critical/sensitive period now, actually, so… Technically, you're still susceptible to making more of them. It might go away, one day, or it won't. It depends."

"I…" He scratched his baby claws against the stone floor. "I imagine that perhaps I was… startled. It was a shock. That's how it started. Something. Falling. The sky. My head…" He shook himself and turned his back, and refused to speak again for the rest of the session. Caudwell made his return the following day, clutching the thin, pale thing that Foop now knew to be called a manila file folder.

"I did some additional research to refresh my knowledge on Anti-Fairies. I was right."

"Of course you were. When have you ever told me about any time you were wrong?"

Caudwell ignored the jibe and sat down in his usual plastic seat, which over the past several days had migrated into the cell rather than outside it. It snapped beneath his weight and dumped him to the floor. Foop cackled at that- it had taken so long to perfect the trap without it looking obvious. If Caudwell was annoyed, he gave no sign. Instead, he tucked his short legs beneath him and cleared his throat.

"Falling to the ground from any decent height would kill the pup of an actual Earth bat."

"How fortunate for me then that I'm immortal."

"Conditionally immortal, yes." Keeping one ear plugged, the pixie opened the folder and very delicately, like it were injured and beautiful, drew out a sheet of paper. "I've been informed that you've both fallen and hit your head in the past. Possibly multiple times. Additionally, that slight limp in your right wing that stems from your father's mindset has given you some difficulty flying, and as a result you have a habit of bashing into things."

"Your point being?" Foop asked, not taking the paper. Caudwell replaced it gingerly where he'd drawn it out.

"While a fall won't kill you, you can severely damage yourself if this goes on."

"I'm an Anti-Fairy. We're born damaged, with limited control over our poor, messed-up little lives thanks to your kind." He squeezed his rubber elephant. "Seelie Courters- they'll be the death of us all; you note my words in blood."

Caudwell watched him. "I also learned something else."

"Oh, splendid. Congratulations. Extra credit. You've just been promoted to work with endangered sea otters. Have a cupcake. Down a soda." Foop flung the toy elephant and his hands into the air. "Does it sound like I even remotely care what you do in your off time?"

"All babies need physical touch, but Anti-Fairies especially. You have bat DNA coursing through a third of your genetic code. If you don't get enough physical touch, it will stunt your growth."

"I can live with that."

"And it will negatively impact your intelligence."

"Hmm." Foop picked up a colorful alphabet block and set it on top of another. "No, I rather think I'll be all right."

Caudwell leaned forward. "I want to help you."

"You want to manipulate me," Foop corrected.

"No. I'm not doing this for me. I really do want to help."

The anti-fairy snorted softly and made a few exaggerated gestures with his hands and eyes. "How much are they paying you, again? And who's shelling out for this anyway? Jorgen? My parents? Taxes?"

"If you really want to know, Pixies Inc. is funding this as a favor to your uncle Anti-Robin, who alerted us to your conditions here."

"Uncle Anti-Schnozmo?" Foop had met the long-nosed anti-fairy for the first time just over a week ago, so half a lifetime ago. He'd been named after Foop's own grandfather, or something.

Caudwell shrugged. "I suppose."

"Why should you want to do him a favor?"

The pixie's upper lip twitched. "We're getting off the subject at hand."

Sigh; nostril sigh. "Oh, alright. What do you propose I do to maintain or improve my advanced level of intellect?"

"You and I are going to cuddle."

"Is he kidding?" Foop crossed his arms. "The Harbinger of the Doom Time does not do cuddles. I'm entirely independent and completely well-functioning."

With a tap of a button on Caudwell's cell phone, every inanimate toy and blanket and loose chip of stone rotated in Foop's direction, and swarmed. He yelped. He swatted. He kicked. He tore with his fangs. But despite his best struggles, the toys dumped him in Caudwell's lap. Before he could scramble up again, the pixie wrapped his arms around his square body and leaned back against the wall.

"Unhand me! I'm the heir to the High Count seat! I'll one day declare war on your people for this! You've doomed your civilization in an instant! I would be your ruler!"

Instead of acknowledging his protests, Caudwell kept in the corner and began scratching his fingers against various points on the young anti-fairy's head. Foop gnawed on his wrist, blurting out the meanest bad words he knew (He knew an awful lot of them, like "doody" and "stinkhead"), and then-

then-

He blinked. He still had half his claws in the sleeve of Caudwell's gray jacket. And he was still fully himself- no doubt about that. But…

" _Oh_ ," he sighed. His fingers relaxed. "Yes. Rub my upper corner again, cuddle slave."

Caudwell ran his palm back and forth over the pointy corner. Foop tried to keep his body tense, but his limbs began to collapse one by one. He leaned his head against the pixie's chest and slipped his thumb in his mouth. A trill tickled upwards from deep within his throat. His eyelids drifted shut.

"You like this?"

"Yes. It's soft."

"This type of thing is healthy for your development."

"Mmhm." Foop found that he didn't really care. The slow, regular strokes of the pixie's hand pleased him, and as far as he was concerned, hey… He could surely suffer through a few minutes of clinging, smothering snuggles if it meant sparing his intelligence, couldn't he? As far as hidden weaknesses went, was his really so bad?


	23. (63) Entire World

_Summary:_ H.P. and Sanderson take the bus to a small town in search of the genies in Genie World, who are behind in their paperwork.

 _Characters:_ Sanderson, H.P., assorted genies

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Hidden" / "Terrible Timing"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **63\. Entire World** (Shortly after "Anti-Poof")

 _Year of Breath; Autumn of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

Emotionless and monotone as he often liked to imply he was, Sanderson couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief when H.P. fell asleep with his tall forehead against the speckled window pane, his pen still clenched loosely in his liver-spotted hand, one sleeve of his purple sweatshirt rolled up to the elbow. Nothing calmed the boss down like having paperwork to do (even if he'd been straining his eyes in the pale blue light of the otherwise dark bus). Though Sanderson prided himself on his patience and tact, the number of times this morning he'd had to long-distance order obscure food cravings and then _ping_ in stacks of plates and plasticware was beginning to make him want to eat his tie. Actually, a nibble of it was already missing from the very bottom.

They'd taken the slow, smelly Fairytail Transit across the clouds- on paper because they wanted to save cash. Officially that wasn't the only reason (or even the main reason). It was an interesting situation altogether; the Head Pixie refused to dish out answers for his unspoken anxiety directly, but Sanderson had deduced ages ago that _ping_ ing while pregnant made him nervous. And if there was one of those very few things that H.P. did not like to prod at with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole, it was that he'd never admit to the way he turned very snappish when he was in second trimester. Nearly emotional, if one could imagine that…

Thus, even though Sanderson could have pointed out that, given the mountains of yellow lagelyn bills and green coins lying about back home, in the long run a bus ride was going to save them about as much cash as a sneeze, and _even though_ just off the top of his head he could have summoned from the archives a thousand different articles parading solid proof that the pink magic used for teleportation, shapeshifting, or (heck) floating had not been found to have ill-adverse effects on nymphs in utero, all at the single swirl of his star-tipped cellphone… he refrained.

Truth be told, Sanderson wasn't in the most fantastic of 'moods' himself. They'd been flying in the bus due north for precisely three hours and nineteen minutes, and still he had yet to shake off the prickling thoughts of a certain blonde-braided, violet-winged damsel in a silly blue and green pom-pom hat who liked to dawdle near the base of the Bridge to Pixie World in this weather. And specifically, how much he regretted not hurling that clay pot of Jardine's daisies down after her.

Tut, tut. It didn't matter how many times the Pixies filed restraining orders; those slimy, butterfly-winged damsels thought they were King Nuada's gift to drakes, slinking up the purple Bit Bridge to go wandering through the streets of Pixie World. Swiping pens. Picking pockets. Raiding sugar stashes. Pinching cheeks. And brushing eraser shavings on the clean tiles- don't _even_ get him started…

Last night, some smoofing idiot (not pointing wandtips, but his name began with an 'L' and ended with 'wood') had decided to set little Rosencrantz on sentry duty. On purpose. And Rosencrantz had, rather predictably, fallen asleep again. Coincidentally, Longwood had vanished around the same time. Sanderson and Wilcox had curled up on the couch, one in pajamas and one in purple rabbit fur, partially watching "The Wizard of Oz" for the three thousandth time and partially watching the door. Waiting.

Even more coincidentally, after the stroke of midnight, the company vice president returned to their room soaked in will o' the wisp magic. Blonde-braided, violet-winged, _silly-blue-and-green-pom-pom-hat_ magic. As much as Sanderson could be squicked out by Idona's interest in him, it was very insulting. She'd (understandably) nursed a crush on him for a very long time, and now she turned and smooched Longwood again? What a two-timing snatter!

It wasn't that he wanted Idona to like him. Illegal cross-class relationships weren't his style, and neither was the harem life. He just… didn't want her to like anyone else. And, Longwood had come back without the key to their apartment, because of course he had. Idona only kissed in exchange for keys and security codes and access cards. Who knew how many copies of it she was running off now? Getting the locks changed and ensuring they stayed that way was going to be more annoying than it had to be.

So that had been this morning. It wasn't fair. The evidence was there. Rosebud on guard duty, him slipping away, the vanishing keys- it all pointed to one thing. Longwood beckoned the wisps intentionally. So many pixies had fallen in the past (the fact that they hadn't died or come close to it was irrelevant) because Longwood had allowed them in. Worse, he was actually fond of them. Like, in a gootchie-goggling type of way. There was data. There was _proof._

So _why_ wouldn't H.P. demote him? Better yet, fire him? Better yet better yet, disown him and cut their ties for good? Sanderson didn't understand it. Correlation didn't equal causation, his crown. Longwood was obviously putting the Pixie race in danger. Danger was bad. He was doing a poor job. He needed to be punished. And he certainly _didn't deserve the jingling star on his pointed hat!_

Sanderson smothered a groan and pushed one wrist through his hair. Maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe the boss was his usual level-headed and task-directed self today, and _he_ was the one who needed this paperwork vacation out in the field in… Where was it they were heading, again?

Right. Mudlip, Minnesota. Sounded like a pleasantly dull and boring small town. After spinning a blue pen several times through his fingers, he passed another forty-five minutes sketching contract outlines along the underside of his left arm.

Back in Kansas, the rain had still been coming down like rice on the head of some sorry Fairy who'd approached Pixies Incorporated in search of divorce papers. The city itself (if one could call six skyscrapers - two of which were apartment complexes - a sugar bar, a bank, a parking garage, a laundromat, a saucerbee stadium, a golf course, and a grocery store a city) may be above the clouds, but try telling that to the whipping winds and chilled air, or that plucky sound of raindrops against the Bit Bridge.

He looked forward to visiting clearer skies, in the sun. The sun was useful. The sun was good. The sun warmed faces, nourished crops, and shattered the soft kiss of deadly snow. No one liked the rain.

"I miss the dull gray rain," H.P. said wistfully, gazing out the window.

Sanderson cracked one eyelid open to confirm that this statement was indeed voiced by the newly-awoken Head Pixie and not some figment of his imagination. Then, pushing his shades closer to the bridge of his nose, he slid down in his scooped brown seat. There were three reasons he couldn't argue with that logic.

The floating bus tilted forward and plunged below the cloudlevel, all at once filling the dark bus with streams of natural lighting, even if it was mostly from the moon. Backpacks and duffel bags jarred up and down in the aisles. One slid all the way to the front. Sanderson nudged his briefcase with his foot and tightened his grip on his armrest as their ride leveled out again.

"Mudlip?" he asked dully.

"Mudlip," the Head Pixie answered dully.

The bus dispatched them above solid Earth soil, beside a row of jagged train tracks. The sky glinted pale purple, swirled with pinks and oranges. Like home. A signpost, a bulletin board, and a wooden box the size and shape of a rabbit's hutch all guarded the only distinct walking path across the dirt. A bit further on, where the path melted into a paved street, crooked buildings stretched lazily long and low. Leviathans peeping above the waves of a pebbled ocean. Fluorescent lights gleamed behind dirty window panes.

The Head Pixie poked out his tongue as he descended the last step to solid ground. His wrinkled wings rearranged themselves beneath his sweatshirt, the apexes still peeping out from beneath and brushing at the backs of his knees. "Yes, this is the place. The taste is repressed, but I'm picking up traces of roasted almonds, burning marshmallows, and overcooked french fries."

"I never doubted for a moment, sir."

As Sanderson finished speaking, fuzzy rain began to patter on their sleeves and hair. The instant water touched his beloved cowlick, it drooped over like a Jacob's ladder and splatted between his eyes. There it clung, one low curl in an 'S' for his name. Sanderson considered caring, then chose not to. Instead, he stuffed the hand that wasn't holding the briefcase into his pocket, fingering a tattered napkin decorated with rhymes as he buzzed his wings.

"Is it true that a genie's kiss will drain your magic for a week?"

"Mmhm. In a sense." H.P. set a hand to his waist and frowned up the street. "Technically, it would overload your system and fritz all your lines off. It's twenty minutes until death from there if you brought no Fairykind companions, as genies can't give you SHAMPAX. Thus, I would advise against engaging in the practice. If you do get knocked out of commission, then I'll just be flitting home to the Kansas skies without you."

Sanderson, as per usual, refrained from stating the obvious: that H.P. wouldn't get far without the bus pass. Sanderson rarely relinquished that pass for this very reason.

The Head Pixie flared his collar and began walking along the dirt path towards the town as the bus fishtailed into the air behind them. "Welcome to June, with its warm drizzles and sour smells of livestock carried in on the wind."

Nod. They didn't make small talk as they went - that wasn't exactly the Pixie way - but Sanderson read too much in his boss during those two minutes anyhow. The straightening of the shoulders. The constant brushing down the front of his purple shirt to remove the wrinkles. The preening of his hair, fluffy white curls folded behind the ears. Regular removal of his glasses to wipe squirming droplets from the lenses twice against the inside of his left sleeve.

Wordlessly, Sanderson withdrew his cell phone from the inner pocket of his jacket and _ping_ ed in a gray umbrella. "You didn't need to do that," H.P. said, flicking his hood over his star-tipped hat as Sanderson bobbed closer.

"It's worth it, sir. You must be presentable."

"Yes, which must be why you dressed me in this ridiculous human child costume."

"Sir, you know why you have to wear that now. Perhaps if you had worn it the last time you swung by Dimmsdale to pay a visit to Harrington and Buxaplenty, Denzel Crocker may not have caught you with those ani-"

"Denzel Crocker cheated. That was a lucky swing of a butterfly net and it won't happen again. Who even brings butterfly nets to a middle school dance?"

Sanderson suppressed a dry chuckle.

"We're nearing the thick of the town," H.P. said as the Fairwood Market came into view up ahead, low and white and wooden. "It's time you changed too."

After handing his boss the briefcase and the umbrella, Sanderson flicked open his starpiece again and _ping_ ed himself into human form, or something like it (no lungs this time- the plan wasn't to let any real humans get close enough to find out he didn't have a beating heart, or bled in rainbows). Tall stature, thin shoulders, square jaw. One more _ping_ , as an afterthought, and he found himself spinning another gray umbrella through his fingers. He popped it open. His wasp-like wings, because it was easier, he'd shrunken to nubs rather than dissolving them entirely. They twitched against the small of his back as he pocketed the flip phone and trailed - on wobbly feet - between fields of cow-nipped grass on H.P.'s equally-wobbly heels.

A few moments later, H.P. paused at the top of a small rise and said, "Hm."

"Sir?"

"These are the coordinates we were given. I can taste the genie magic permeating the air even in the rain. But this can't be right. Fairy World is brimming with Fairies. Anti-Fairy World with Unseelie. Our one single city is small, but unquestionably populated. Even Anti-Pixie Isle has the decency to look as though magical beings live there. But this?" He turned a full circle, aimlessly gesturing with his umbrella. "This is a basic, old-fashioned human town looking like a page out of the Year of the Splattered Snowfall. It's full of humans. I'm astounded this place even has electricity and running water. Forgive me for expecting that beings with all-influential cosmic powers would choose to roll in riches instead of scraping through poverty. Is this any way to welcome the Head Pixie?"

"Norm says it stunts their magic once they shake off their lamps, H.P. In that state, they can't affect the universe any more than we would be able to without springboarding off a human's wish."

"Still, to think they're living among dirty, nosy humans when there are perfectly good cloudlands a Bridge away…"

Sanderson waited patiently until H.P. had kicked a rock and given up fuming. "Genies usually stay on Earth since they breathe ultraviolet light-"

"Yes, and all the suns in the universe fall on the first plane of existence with the black holes and Abracatraz. Earth is on the second. The cloudlands rise higher, blocking out more and more UV rays as one ascends the Bridges into the higher planes and leaves the suns behind. I know. Don't think I don't know! I'm the one who taught you this."

"Erm, H.P., you're attracting attention."

Very few humans were wandering the streets at this hour and in this weather, but Sanderson had picked up several curious glances over the last few minutes they'd been exploring. Small towns were, after all, close-knit, and their clothes and faces unfamiliar. Belatedly, the pixie realized that when he'd gone into human form, he ought to have changed from his suit and tie and into something less conspicuous. He screamed, " _I work for a_ _rich big city corporation and I enjoy being mugged_ " from cowlick to square toes.

Well, too late for it now. Cars careened around corners fast enough to spray waves against the brick walls on the far side of the street. Dripping umbrellas swished through the air, bobbing like birds. Beneath the overhang of a pottery store, three rather scruffy hobos hunkered in plastic chairs around a fire blazing in a green barrel, coldly sizing them up. An ax lay embedded in a tree stump nearby.

Yep. Definitely should have ditched the suit.

"But is this it?" H.P. asked impatiently, oblivious to their gazes. "If I had been born a genie, I either wouldn't be living in this hole, or I would have made use of those train tracks and turned it into a respectable manufacturing town, at minimum. Take advantage of the Great Lakes and the Hudson River for shipments- it isn't as though that's a long commute, honestly."

Sanderson pulled the umbrella even lower over his head, clinging to the handle with both hands now. He swallowed. "Sir, you're really attracting attention to us. You know we can't risk second glances."

"Of course, that's right. Let's go track us down some genies, then." He twisted around on the heels of his sneakers and began walking towards what appeared to be the widest street this side of the town- a path that would take him directly past the two hobos sitting in the chairs. Not that he seemed to notice, or care.

Sanderson barely had time to think, _Weren't there just three of them?_ before the umbrella snapped shut around his head. A wide palm smacked him from behind. His face bashed against what seemed to be a brick wall with a resounding _crack_. Just as he threw the umbrella away, a smoky navy blue tail snapped around his body from the elbows down and constricted. Sanderson's eyes bulged behind his shades as he coughed up a burst of warm magic. Thick arms tightened around his neck from behind. The world shrieked with radio static as the lines connecting him to the Big Wand's energy field began to fritz. Six curled fingers sunk into his windpipe, and two thumbs into the dip at the back of his neck.

"Well, well, well."

At least, that's what was probably said. Hard to tell for sure through the screaming _asflkdjfslkdjfskld_ noise. The fingers tightened.

"Welcome to Genieworld, Fairy. You're a tad outside your jurisdiction, aren't you?"

"Ih-" Sanderson squeaked, clawing at his throat.

H.P. whipped out the laser cannon core in his forehead and fired off a hot blast of pink- Sanderson caught that out of the corner of his eye. The beam seemed to burn a hole at the shoulder of the brown trench coat the genie wore, but it fizzled out when it came in contact with skin. Absorbed by a being who possessed far more magic.

"Go easy on him, Jasper," one of the hobos called, snuffing out a cigarette by grinding it into his hip. "He's just a pix. Can't you smell the cinnamon? They reek of the stuff like satyr intestines."

The pressure started to ease up, but only one finger at a time, leaving Sanderson to cough and hack. Bitter and sharp, the genie finally withdrew and tucked his hands in his pockets. Sanderson fell to the pavement, his human-esque disguise flickering uncertainly around him.

"Then we're in the right place, and you're our genies," H.P. guessed, in a tone that probably sounded fairly neutral to the untrained ear, though it dripped with disgust to any pixie. Blearily, Sanderson raised his head as the navy-tailed genie slithered back to his companions by the chairs. Wherever the rain hit the bare skin at his neck and forearms, it steamed.

Now that Sanderson knew what to look for, he could definitely pinpoint the three figures as the sources of smoky-tasting imprints in the energy field. Tails curled out from the bottoms of their trench coats, which at a second glance were much thinner at the waists than they really should have been if their wearers were human. The damsel who stretched out and interlocked her fingers with Jasper's had a scarlet tail. The orange genie chewed a sprig of grass or wheat and almost never stopped scratching at the wiry red hairs on his chin. An orange hick, of all things! What a waste.

And, now that he was looking, Sanderson could even spot a fourth genie. A yellow child sitting quietly _in_ the barrel of crackling fire, her tail poking out a hole in the side. Because where else was she supposed to be?

"I plead _Pinewater v. Shadewind_ on the grounds that I didn't recognize you in the circus-reject clothes," the navy genie snipped at H.P. "That's a thing I can do to avoid the 'attacking a neutral party on Earth soil' fee, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure I should let the fine slide. Your companions seemed to recognize the pixie imprint easily enough."

"Nice going, Henry," the red genie muttered to the orange (Henry- his name was Henry).

"Sir," hissed Sanderson. That was no way to start this conversation.

As for Henry, he got up from his plastic seat and leaned against the fire barrel, arms folded. The flames danced off his dark glasses, but Sanderson figured that behind them, he was checking the Head Pixie out up and down. "Tch. What's shakin' with that colorful getup, tater tot? You smell like a mermaid and look like a fairy. I thought that was against your kind's customs. Bit of cultural appropriation then, isn't it?"

H.P. flipped down the hood of his purple sweatshirt, revealing his floppy gray hat for the first time. "It's a disguise I wear sometimes when I visit populated Earth locations like your cute little Mudlip Town. When I wear this, humans tend to pass me off as an equally-human child."

"Uh-huh. And you expect me to believe the humies thought you were a kid even when you got all those wrinkles on your face?"

"Yes, actually. Principle of Observation. So long as I'm coated with the magical dust particles that regularly gather on my skin like sweat, they saw only what they expected. One glance at my small size and childish clothes, a tall human adult obviously accompanying me, and they usually don't perform a double-take."

Jasper grunted. "We have to wear trenchcoats."

"It's a very nice coat," Sanderson said sincerely, finally reaching for his umbrella and getting to his feet again at last. He shifted closer to his boss, one hand in his jacket.

"Still. Something here seems fishy." Henry picked a fingernail between his soot-stained teeth. "I ain't sure your costume's much of a disguise if'n it goes and reads 'We're Pixies' all across the front."

"That was to prevent your friend from confusing us with Fairies and jumping us."

"Seriously, Henry," said the red genie, "stop talking."

H.P. cleared his throat as the orange genie glanced sharply at her, snapping the bit of straw in his mouth. "I was informed that Mudlip here functioned as Genieworld, USA division."

"Spot on, bucko."

"Good." He set the briefcase down between his feet. "I'd like to get this over with as soon as possible. Did you gather all your fellows as I requested, and where can we go to find them once we've finished with you?"

The red genie smiled thinly. "You're there, gray."

H.P. paused. "This is it? This here with just… just the three of you? You can't tell me this is your entire world."

"Four, but otherwise, 'fraid so. Name's Tansy."

"Tansy what?" Sanderson asked automatically, inching in Henry's direction.

"Tansy, daughter of Michellene."

"Genies don't have surnames," H.P. remembered then. He stared down at his briefcase, presumably trying to decide if he was annoyed that he had brought so many extra forms along for no reason, or if he was glad that there were only four genies in, well, "Genieworld, USA" and therefore that the job would be over with quickly enough so complaining wasn't even worth it.

Henry turned his head then. "Does your friend have a problem with me?"

As all eyes zeroed in on him, Sanderson smoothed a few wrinkles across the front of his suit, inwardly and physically kicking himself in the ankle. "My apologies, Mr. Henry. I, um, didn't realize I was staring. It's just that… you're orange. I've only met one other orange magical being in the last 253,000 years of my life, so I'm a little starstruck."

'Orange' was an understatement, really. Henry's tail glittered soft persimmon. Even with the prospect of paperwork hovering on the horizon, Sanderson had a difficult time focusing on his task and not on how pretty the Genie magic would look on his hand in field-sight. He'd never scrub the dust that palm again, or if he did, he'd brush it off into a little jar for the shelf in his office. That would make a good sugar bar story. Maybe even get him a free Mountain Dew, or at least a Coca Cola at Ivory Wand and Comet Blood over in the Oklahoma skies- _"You'll never guess where I found an orange- Here, take a whiff of it and then look me in the eyes and swear it doesn't reek of genie"_.

"Sure." Henry moved away just before Sanderson's fingertips could touch his tail. "Let's get this census-taking business done. I'd like to get out of this awful rain before next week."

H.P. followed the genie as Henry retreated beneath the overhang. "Sanderson, you can take Jasper and the yellow. I'll deal with Henry and Tansy."

"I was thinking I-"

Up went the eyebrow.

"Er… I mean, of course, sir."

The yellow damsel had climbed halfway out of the barrel now, and her hand slipped across serrated metal. She yelped and buckled forward. Out of complete knee-jerk reaction the pixie made a grab for her before she could hit the ground. But he dropped her as soon as they came in contact.

Right. Barrel of fire.

"She's bleeding lava," he sputtered after that, holding his hand flat by his side and repressing every instinct that screamed for him to shake it out in the cold air.

"We do that." Jasper settled back into his plastic seat and pulled the yellow genie into his lap. His fingers drummed against the trench coat in the place where his knee would be. "Now, how does this get done?"

"You take these sheets," Sanderson said, _ping_ ing a clipboard and stapled stack of papers out from the briefcase near where H.P. hovered, "and I take these ones. Answer those questions, and alert me if you're having trouble understanding them."

"And our personal information is kept private?"

He nodded. "Generally speaking, yes. Put simply, only trusted fingers will be getting their hands on these, and they won't be used against you in any manner."

"Are you 'trusted fingers'?"

"I like to think so, yes. I can list all the exact details of the system if you care for them."

Jasper let out a grunt and scribbled out approximately two sentences on a line. "Don't bother. This late, in this weather, with all this stuff to skim, I'm not in the fezzin' mood. Remind me, why are you making us do this?"

"Freed genies, while they do emit a high-frequency pulse in the energy field, are actually rather difficult to track down and maintain tabs on, and we technically don't consider _en lamp_ genies as 'people' any more than will o' the wisps and trolls for reasons that I presume you, having lived in a lamp once yourself, view as obvious. We didn't know you all here had shaken off your lamps, or else we would have shown up sooner. As free genies, you are honorary Fairykind citizens, and with your apparently long-standing 'Genieworld' refuge becoming an officially-recognized establishment for the first time, it's expected that you will contact us when you receive any new, recently-freed arrivals."

"So you're just randomly stalking us, basically."

Sanderson lifted a brow. His wings itched. The town appeared deserted now as the rain began to sweep down harder and faster beyond the lip of the overhang, and he wished he could shrug off the lanky and awkward human shape and revert to the size he was familiar with. But to the genie studying the papers, he droned, "The census data gets used by the government and plays a role in determining healthcare services, tax benefits, lineages, danger areas, population density, storm warnings, where alerts ought to be sent if there are major disturbances ringing through the Fairy force, et cetera, et cetera. Perhaps most importantly, since we were told that you were given permission to become your own, ah, 'Genieworld', you'll have official representation on the Fairy Council, and we're supposed to help you register to vote. Elections are held every fifty-thousand years. The last one occurred in the human year 1768, Summer of the Coiled Thornbush, so you have awhile to go yet."

Jasper stared at him over the fire barrel, hooped earrings glinting. A muscle in his cheek twitched several times. Then a muscle in the other. "You do realize that genies are only active for a hundred thousand years before they go dormant, right?"

"I'm sorry. I can't fix that. I'm only following orders."

"You gotta be twisting my goatee," the navy genie muttered as he paged through paper after paper. Three of them even fluttered to the cold hard ground, which made the pixie bite his thin lip. "I really have to fill out all this smoof?"

"It's only two hundred questions," Sanderson said in surprise.

"And I'm not sure I know half of them. What's an area code and why do I need one? Where would I find out if I'm supposed to be paying a mortgage for hanging around this rumpled town? How can you expect me to know the responses to all these taxes and insurance questions off the top of my head? Is it your business to know how often I bathe? Do I really have to document my sex life?"

"I don't remember that question."

"It says 'fertility'."

"Oh. That's just, have you had any junior genies in the last thousand years."

"Hm." Jasper made a few markings and brushed away a yawn. "Gotta 'fess up, but if there's something I do miss about the old ball and chain of being tied to a lamp, it was my ability to _gong_ up money and stacks of completed paperwork any time I wanted it. Okay, I gotta ask. What's up with the 'Can you climb stairs' question?"

Sanderson shook his head and returned his attention to his own clipboard. "You're acting like I wrote this thing. It's an official government document. I'm just the messenger." He actually had written most of it, but he saw no reason to bring that up now.

"I feel like it's a deliberate jab at our people anyway."

"… Simply out of curiosity, how often do you bathe?"

"In water, in lava, or in carbon tetrachloride?"

"Never mind." He turned his attention to the yellow genie, still curled quietly in Jasper's lap. "I never got her name."

"Anne. Mine and Tansy's daughter."

"She's _your_ daughter?"

"Yes?"

Sanderson kept his mouth shut, because… surely they knew that a blue genie and a red one wouldn't produce a yellow? They had to. Wasn't his business anyway.

Only… it was. When he glanced down at the first page of the forms, his pen hovered over the line that read _Father_.

Tansy had apparently heard this part of the conversation, because she leaned in from the neighboring chair, her eyes glowing like chips of coal. "Is something the matter?" she asked, syrup-ly. Sweetly.

"Nothing at all. I was working out the spelling of 'Jasper' in my head." Sanderson copied this information down delicately and hopscotched his way through the paperwork in the hour and a half they were there. The rain sang and moaned intermittently. Eventually, he did win permission from H.P. to shed the human-like skin. Blue ink stained his square fingernails. The moon crested and began to set.

At long last, when the storm was getting colder and beginning to blow sideways, the pens went down. Sore necks leaned back. Exhausted hands rubbed drooping eyelids. The pixies waited patiently as the genies took a moment to complain about the task and thank embers that it was all over, and then he and his boss gathered up the completed documents. The copies for the official Pixie records would follow later, as would the triplicate filing, if it actually came down to that.

Clicking and scraping the teeth in the back of his mouth, H.P. raised his head. His lavender eyes glittering like hornets behind his glasses. "You all checked 'Other' on the obligatory question of whether you're members of the Seelie or the Unseelie Court."

"Guilty," said Henry, swapping that bit of wheat he liked to chew on from one side of his mouth to the other. His orange tail coiled around three legs of his chair. "That's what we are. No such thing as anti-genies to be had, and we have no part in your little 'trooping shining throne' and 'solitary buttery spirit' labeling conventions."

"I didn't even list an 'Other' option. Did you seriously waste your great cosmic-rending abilities to add a perfectly-printed box to this question?"

"Yep," came a dull-voiced chorus that could have given a pixie shivers. And, well, it kind of did.

H.P. balled the document slightly in his left fist. "I see. You're not supposed to do that. This is a document printed on chesberry paper. That's a magical tree. Magic doesn't affect magical objects, so you can't use magic on it."

" _You_ can't," Tansy said.

Jasper upturned his palms, then let them fall against his chest.

The Head Pixie puffed out his cheeks and swelled his chest, as he tended to before he burst. But then his eyes locked with Sanderson, and from there slid down to little Anne, sleeping on her back on the pavement, boiling drool leaking onto her wrist.

He simply rolled his eyes.

That was really it, then. H.P. straightened his hat, pulled up his sweatshirt hood, and thanked them all diplomatically. The genies dipped their heads.

Then, dull gray umbrellas unfurled, the two pixies took to the dirty pebbled roads and trotted off to catch a long bus ride home.

* * *

 **A/N** : One time it was the middle of the night and BookwormGal and I got talking about our respective favorite muses, and for some reason we both really needed "small town Genieworld genies and miffed pixies whose high expectations have been crushed now all squabbling over paperwork together" to be a thing.

If you haven't yet run across BookwormGal, let me just tell you that she's a fabulous writer (for many fandoms) with a seriously great 'fic here on FFN about Norm and Timmy and a super-precious innocent little eight-year-old girl and the power of friendship and family love. Plus, y'know, there are Anti-Fairies and Pixies teaming up in it and I'm always here for Sanderson accidentally playing a role in screwing up the entire universe.

This is the 'fic that actually made me change my opinion about Norm from vague interest but dislike to honestly growing fond of him, and trust me, that kind of thing doesn't happen very often. It's called _Never Had a Friend Like Me_ , it even has a sequel/spin-off, and is definitely worth checking out.

And it's also her birthday today, so, y'know.


	24. (113) Step Back

_Summary:_ Foop's entire extended family have arrived at the castle to celebrate him shedding his square body for his juvenile one; he and his alternate personality begin to fidget.

 _Characters:_ Foop, Hiccup, Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Marigold, Anti-Florensa, assorted anti-fairies

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "This Is a Box" / "Naptime"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **113\. Step Back** (Post Season 10)

 _Year of Water; Winter of the Aligned Raindrops_

* * *

His rash easily could have been attributed to the color-eye STD acting up again this time of December, but Foop preferred to blame it entirely on the new cravat around his neck because said cravat, its ruffles almost identical to those of his father's, was totally awful. Incredibly, horribly, absolutely, entirely, quite simply rather awful.

First off, it was brown, which went very nicely with pale blue fur, if one through painful politeness ignored the fact that it didn't. The feathers had been ripped from one of those dead owls his mother had dragged back to the kitchen, and they itched at his throat like ticks on a dust bunny. The more his father stroked his no-longer-so-square head with its two dripping black curls in the front and bragged about various accomplishments of his son that were only partway true, the more Foop scratched. Clumps of fur ('arctic blue tone', he thought he'd heard his mother boast to her aunt two hours ago, and the lightest tint of all his family line for seven generations) were tearing out between his claws, revealing hard rows of scales beneath, and those were beginning to peel in short strips just as fast.

Oh, how immensely he loathed the formal parties. Although this one had supposedly been thrown in celebration of him finally shedding his ugly cubical exoskeleton, it certainly didn't feel as though he was much of a guest of honor tonight. His father insisted on toting him around the castle halls like a high-floating and newly-polished crown, contributing to status and atmosphere with his irritable silence and scripted conversational replies. On any other day Foop would have blasted down the dangling streamers, ripped apart the wrappings of the presents with his claws in a matter of wingbeats, and flown off cackling to his room. But he _was_ grounded, and he wanted to get _un_ grounded, so he kissed up and played their stupid games.

On top of his entire extended family being here this evening, along with the members of the Anti-Fairy Council and the random strangers who had gotten wind about the presence of food, he had Hiccup to deal with. The goody-two-shoed brat had already jumped out to take control of their body and say hello to their peers twice now (once to a drake with orange eyes and once to one with shaggy black hair). _But_ , Foop consoled himself as he rotated a steaming mug of hot chocolate in his long fingers, _but_ , the two of them were getting better at respecting one another's boundaries. Baby steps were still steps, and at least they weren't stepping backwards anymore.

Therapy with Mr. Caudwell seemed to be helping. Granted, Foop had little pre-therapy life to compare with, but as long as things were going his way, he figured he would toss his faith in any placebo that was offered him. 'Don't smash the lamp if it perchance should contain a genie' and all that. Speaking of which, where had that dratted old genie lady slithered off to with that crock pot…

Hiccup wasn't gone. Oh no, he was never gone. Rather, he hummed softly in the back of their mind, waiting with all the shivering patience of a clinging red leaf. Caudwell said that alternate personalities were most often born to defend and help their host. Hiccup wasn't a mean fellow, mostly, but even after forty-six years or so, he was still learning to settle down in there.

Smoke, that feathered cravat ruffled his fur the wrong way. Maybe he could kill himself with one of the knives on the nearest refreshment table while his father wasn't watching. He'd automatically regenerate within seconds, of course, but oh what precious itch-free seconds those would be. Foop had never actually "killed" himself on purpose before, but he'd been meaning to try it for awhile. They said that an Anti-Fairy dying caused their counterpart to sneeze.

Flipping the tail of his orange and black scarf over his shoulder, Foop pushed himself away from the wall and flapped obediently after his father's tucked-under heels as Anti-Cosmo finished making small talk with Anti-Theodore ("Anti-Ted", he wore the Maroon Robe, represented the Far West Region on the Anti-Fairy Council, kept a summer home on Mars, liked mango-blend chocolates, sported the black 'mustache and goatee' fur combo that proved him to be a 'pilot' just like Foop and the other two Council members, constantly drummed his claws, was dangerously opposed to neck-biting as a form of punishment as part of his platform, owned seventeen snakeupines, and had horrifyingly managed to cram all of these things in a single six-minute conversation) and moved on to talking politics with two of Foop's second cousins at a perch beside a barred window further down the hall.

Foop himself might have chosen to be less vocal than they if he were the one with a high opinion about the increasing-taxes-for-the-use-of-welfare policy of Anti-Ted's main competition for the upcoming election, you know, considering that the tall red-furred man was roosting _right there_ eating cucumber sandwiches from an anti-gravity platter, but then again, as the son of the High Count and Countess, Foop wasn't really allowed to voice his political opinions anyway. Personally, he liked Anti-Alin the Teal, all things considered. Anti-Daryl the Navy he definitely could get by without. That _baba will zap you and give you an ouchie_ thing still haunted his hair-trigger reactions at times… Rhoswen only knew how many daydreams full of red hair and tubas and sandpaper and lemonade he jolted awake from in a frantic, sticky sweat.

"There he is!" his grandmother shouted then, prompting a lull in his father's conversation with those second cousins. Foop and Anti-Cosmo exchanged disgruntled glances. Before a decision could be reached, Anti-Florensa swooped down from her rafter to rumple her grandson's ears with her balding hand. "Little Nebula!"

"Mother," Anti-Cosmo greeted stiffly, still floating. He'd obviously been so focused on trying to struggle through all this endless social interaction without a break that he hadn't even noticed her personal magical imprint leaking into the energy field above his head, or he would have "Nope"d away from there so fast.

Foop rolled his eyes and forced his tight lips away from his fangs. Ah, yes. _Nebula_. Anti-Poof was his legal name as far as the Fairies were concerned, but things worked differently on this side of the Barrier. He wasn't supposed to use his Anti-name until he reached age of majority at 150,000, and really, the Unseelie legal system would recognize him as Nebula for life anyway.

It was an interesting name, but bad blood soaked the story behind it; Fairy-Cosmo and Fairy-Wanda had broken Tradition when they themselves along with Timmy Turner chose the Fairy-Poof's middle name. Boy, his father had been livid that the right and ceremony had been snatched away from them- one more casualty to the selfishness of Fairies. So livid that he refused to acknowledge it in private away from the expectant ears of the commoners, and had bestowed the unflattering name of 'Foop' on his son instead. Something about flipping the name to ward off bad mojo, maybe, but also maybe not. Foop himself had slowly grown fond of the silly nickname over the year ( _years_ , he still had to remind himself; plural). Apparently not all of his relatives had gotten the memo. To them, he was their little Nebula still. And it made him feel like they thought him a pup.

Tell us: Did they look under the age of forty-five to you?

Perhaps, or close to it. But given the muddling of the timestream, did that make them one? That was the hundred-thousand-lagelyn question.

"I'm here too, Grandnana," Hiccup said, flipping into control and holding out his arms. "Hiccup, remember? Your other grandson?"

Anti-Florensa acted as though he hadn't spoken while she tugged on their right ear. "For smoke's sake, your ribs are as jagged as anti-pixie teeth under this dirty, matted fur of yours! Where's the shine to your pretty blue color? And doesn't your horrid father feed you? One might think the drake who pitched a massive hissy-fit all those years ago against the decree that Anti-Fairies weren't allowed to eat would care for one of his own."

"I p _rrr_ ovide for him plenty," Anti-Cosmo protested, obviously trying to keep his tone level and firm. It came out as more of a nervous whine, and Hiccup didn't miss the shaking in his father's wrists or the gradual lowering of his pointed ears.

"Mother scrubbed us in the bath," he mumbled, slipping back into Foop. Foop wished he could have sent his alternate personality a stinging look for that. He didn't want to be the one out here either.

Anti-Florensa shook her head, her expensive trails of earrings rattling. "I don't want you spending any more time than absolutely necessary with this selfish pig I had the misfortune to bear, Nebula- you ought to listen to Anti-Wanda-la-la. She's a good damsel and she always knows exactly what she's doing. The ideal High Countess."

Yep. Ideal as a handful of trick dice.

"Mother, could we perhaps not discuss this on Foop's special day? At least not here?"

 _Cowardly old man_ , Foop thought. He took another slow sip of his hot chocolate to avoid snapping something that Hiccup might regret. Take a step back. Best behavior. Be strong for the return of greenhouse privileges. Among other things, the gardener pixie was supposed to be bringing another delivery of ladybugs tomorrow, and even a small handful of those insects would render a lawn gnome groveling at his feet in school after that. He looked forward to it.

"Tell me honestly, Nebula," Anti-Florensa cooed as she smoothed down his collar (flattening that cravat against his neck), "are you getting all the nutrition a growing drake needs? Nutrition is one of those trivial details that you wouldn't be synced up with the Fairy-Poof for, you know what I mean?"

Foop cast a sideways size-up in Anti-Cosmo's direction, but the High Count had already inched a few flaps closer to the trellis they'd decorated for today's winter solstice and was trying to signal Anti-Wanda for support; she could turn anyone off from any conversation. At the moment, however, she was clinging to the underside of a low bar in the neighboring throne room and chatting a thousand cloudlengths a wingbeat with several of her eleven uncles. So, almost anyone, then.

"Father doesn't allow us to eat meat. Mother has to sneak chicken nuggets into my lunchbox for school. He says we're fr-"

"You're _not_ a fruit bat!"

He took the acidic spittle that accompanied this statement mostly in stride, even if he did spit when it was done and bristle at the back of his neck. Instantly Hiccup flashed to the reins and apologized profusely for the offensive comment of his 'brother', but their grandmother plowed on without gracing his response.

"I couldn't count on the spit-orchids in the gardens how many times I drilled into his head that he's legally a _Faeumbra fae,_ no matter how much anti-brownie vampire bat-patron blood is trickling beneath his loose-hanging skin thanks to that rotten great-grandfather Gonzo of yours. But no, always with the accursed sniveling: 'But Mama, but Mama, I'm too sick to chase after sprites', 'I don't want any greasy bats'." Anti-Florensa made a pursed-lipped, narrow-eyed, upturned-eyebrow face to emulate an expression Foop seriously doubted his father had ever worn in his life. "Ungrateful brat; Rhoswen only knows what's wrong with that drake. I ought to have punished him more while he was young before he became so corrupted. Although now I highly doubt that would have helped. It would appear his brokenness is internal and there's no curing that, only pruning it back here and there so he doesn't make such a mortifying embarrassment of the Anti-Lunifly family. Smoke, I wish he hadn't taken the Anti-Fairywinkle name. And by the Lia Fáil, I hope to Kiiloëi you don't turn out like him."

"Nebula," one of their second cousins interrupted, releasing her perch and drifting over before the conversation could continue its downward spiral. Anti-Crystalli held out both hands, palms crossed over and upturned in greeting. "Oh, Ah just adore your blue sweater vest, darlin'. The dark threads look dazzlin' with your light arctic tone fur, and the purple accents at the collar bring out that darn-pretty shimmer in your precious eyeballs."

"I'm Hiccup, but thanks." Taking advantage of the distraction, Hiccup upturned his hands and let his older but lower-ranked second cousin lay hers in them. "Foop chose the sweater vest part, but I picked out the black shirt underneath with the sleeves, you know?"

She smiled the peculiar smile that Hiccup had long learned meant, _Poor Foop, he's playing pretend again; when will he grow out of it, no one really believes him_. "Well, Ah do declare you're the most dashin' one-year-old in the castle t'night. You look doggone ravishing."

"Oh, but the honor's all mine, Dame…"

He blanked. She was the Anti-Crystalli, but was she over age of majority yet? Which name was he supposed to use?

"Heleen?" he tried.

Anti-Florensa smacked him on the back of the head with her star-tipped staff. "Anti-Crystalli," Foop corrected themself through gritted fangs as Hiccup writhed internally from the sting of the blow. Foop doubted he'd swapped out willingly- that was a hard and fast stun, capable of shaking a dragon's fist open.

"Lugh's spear, what smoof is that hopeless spawn of mine teaching you? You aren't going to rely on flashcards for life like your smokeforsaken father, are you? I should hope not. You've got the colored eyes to be an iris, and you're a proper pilot _and_ a descendant of the Anti-Lunifly line, honorary members of the Anti-Coppertalon family (through _me_ , might I remind you), and the people look to you as reborn representative and medium of one of the seven sons of Tarrow the Luck-Twister on vapor."

"Really?" he asked, unable to bite back the sarcasm any longer. His claws had left indents in the dark ceramic of his mug; he'd already snapped off the handle and was hoping she didn't notice him clenching it in his hand. "Tell me more, Grandnana."

She didn't pick up on his disinterest. As his embarrassed second cousins made themselves softly scarce, Anti-Florensa spun her shimmering staff through her fingers and thunked the flat end into a rug that concealed very little of the stone floor. It stamped a circle in the blue fabric. "Of course, _which_ of Tarrow's sons you channel remains up to considerable debate. The fact that you don't even know which of the seven Unseelie temples to worship in or which candidates to choose from to fill your camarilla court when you come of age is inconceivable and completely unacceptable. In what year of the zodiac precisely were you born, again?"

Foop sighed through his small round nose (he'd so wanted a pointed one after losing the cube shape) and tugged his scarf between his cravat and bare neck again. "Mother Nature posthumously, you might say, named it the Year of the Frozen Planet, but legally my birthdate falls in the Year of the Last Berry. If you calculate the cycle with the number of years that time was frozen, I would have been born a Breath."

"Last Berry, Frozen Planet, Thawed Calendar, Aligned Raindrops," she counted off on her claws. "That's a Leaves year, a Love year, a Fire year, and a Water year. The Water year is always bad luck for Breaths. And not the good kind of bad luck. This is _bad_ _luck_ bad luck. Bad karma."

Foop smiled and nodded politely, feeling like they'd taken a step back here. Of _course_ he knew karma was the word for 'bad luck even by the standards of Anti-Fairies'. Smoke, she really did think him an idiot. What the devil did she think he'd been going to school for?

Not an education at his level, obviously. He'd requested originally to be placed in the 200th-Year classes, bare minimum. No one cared. They'd only let him in at all because he'd stolen Poof's desire to obliterate his counterpart. That would be so distracting for him, being in the class of someone he was oh-so-understandingly driven to attack, Finella reflex and all. Yes, we mustn't distract Poof… Mustn't strike those in society who actually had legal rights.

And honestly, Foop had never met anyone who firmly believed he would actually go through with it if the opportunity should present itself. A sort of 'Surely we can trust him to bathe alone without drowning himself' scenario, if you would, with that whole synchronized-death thing going on up there. And Hiccup was usually good about stepping in anyway… Smoke, Hiccup the babysitter, who plucked his roommate up by the scruff of his neck and crooned apologies while Foop kicked and spat like a soaked and salty kitten where he dangled, feet swaying.

"Shedding your exoskeleton in such a bad year for you can't possibly be good news," she continued. "Winni is the son who rules the Breath year, and badness knows he won't accept you if you step into his Temple stinking of Thursday. And then there are other questions. What if we were wrong in our careful calculations, and despite the possibility you were born a Breath, the nature spirits agree you were indeed born in the Year That Time Was Frozen."

"… Last Berry?"

Disgusted nod, fluttering fingers. "Worse than that still, the Year of the Frozen Planet was named the Love year by Mother Nature herself, effectively ensuring that the Angels' year 2002 occurs _twice_ entirely on the zodiac, and that 2003 falls on a Fire year. Saturday's Fire year! The Molpa-Pel spare us! Taking this logic into account and falling backward from Leaves, you perhaps could be determined as being born in the Breath year of Wednesday. However are we supposed to account for that, Nebula poppet? With four years for your birth that all could be argued as correct, how are we to know which is the true one at all? Your future depends upon it! With you first in line to inherit the High Count seat and reconstruct your father's camarilla, the fate of the twenty-four planes of existence in the known universe as a whole depends upon it!

"Might I get you a drink, Grandnana?"

Anti-Florensa huffed and clenched her staff. "The fact that my worthless second son has yet to make an official public statement about this is an absolute disgrace. He was meant to do so at your crowning ceremony before the Fairies had you incarcerated the day you were brought into the world, wot?"

By this point, Foop's black mug had splintered quite a lot. Yet through some miracle, he finally managed to excuse himself and flit around the corner and into the next hallway. "Good smoke," Hiccup squeaked as they collapsed against a sconce, mopping their brow with his palm. "You were getting stressed. I thought I was going to have to stab her in the throat."

Foop rubbed his eyes. "Oh, thank Rhoswen's chisel you didn't do that, or Mother shouldn't have let us have home-brought lunch for a week. Rubbish. I do wish Father weren't so anti-soda; we may be young, but I rather feel as though we could use a drink. This sugar-free hot chocolate is giving me migraines."

"Oh, I think that's the iris virus. It's about that time of the year again."

"I don't want to hear it now." Setting the cracked mug and broken handle on a small floating table, Foop pushed the two large, black curls back from their forehead with his claws. They snaked through his fingers, pattering down hair by hair. Additional low curls tickled the nape of his neck. "Mm. Let's treat ourselves to another few cookies from that table in the observatory. I think I can sneak us in. At least those aren't _entirely_ sugar-free."

Hiccup agreed, so that's where they were heading when pricking claws grabbed his pointed ear and yanked. Foop squeaked despite himself as the claws dragged him into one of the castle's (pitifully few) secret passages and slid the door shut. The passage went dark, though Foop's sonar worked just as well. Very slender hands steadied his shoulders.

"G'day, mate. Mind if I pop in and take a quick breather with you?"

Foop blinked. He registered the voice, but the small, skinny body shape was unfamiliar. "Anti-Marigold? Ah, quite right. Goldie shed before I did, so it would only make sense that you would have too. Shouldn't you be having your own exoskeleton-shedding party with your own friends and fellows about now? What are you doing here at the Blue Castle for Winter Turn?"

"Kelsia," she corrected for the dozenth time, propping one foot against his knee to boost herself to his eye-level and nudging back her crown with her wand. Curses- _Kelsia_. He'd spent too many recess periods listening to Poof and the Wisp-Marigold coo that he and 'Anti-Marigold' were such a cute couple, hadn't he? Her four sweeping moth wings rushed with the sound of water falling over cloth as she folded them back into place. "Don't get excited, mate- I didn't sneak in here to get cuddly with all y'all. I need a' copy y'all's lab report for bio again because I don't feel much like doing it myself."

"You waited until _now_ to tell me this? Smoke, Kelsia- it's due by noon, Coordinated Cloudland Time. That's" - he flipped the numbers through his head - "Well, we're in the Blue Time zone, so that would be, what, twenty minutes from now? Is it two hours 'til midnight here?"

"Hey, y'all told me your pa would nick my neck if he caught an anti-wisp skulking about his pretty tea party. I've been staked out behind this door for an hour, waiting to pounce on ya. Almost took a step back and let you prance right on past me, too, but then I just decided to go for it."

Grimacing, Foop rubbed behind his itchy neck. "Yes, I did warn you he'd be irritated, didn't I? Although I may have been exaggerating; I do that from time to time. Contrary to the folktales, he doesn't drink blood. He doesn't even like it, if you can manage to wrap your mind around that. Odd old anti-fairy." He brushed at his scarf and refused to look her in the eyes. "Of course, copying off me profits you nothing in the end, you realize."

"Spare me, mate. I'm like, one." Kelsia removed her foot and floated to the right, further along the tunnel. "Where's the goods?"

After a glance over his shoulder at the passage door, thin blue candlelight leaking in from around the edges, Foop locked it and then motioned with his wing for her to follow him. "Stay on my heels, then, and I'll see what I can do for you."

"Can I ask y'all something?" she said after a minute, flicking a scab from her nose.

"Hm? Mark it."

"Why's y'all's castle have these secret passages anyway?"

"Same as most other castles. Servant tunnels, escape routes, a play area for the pups away from the eyes of disapproving adults. Anti-Fairies can't _poof_ without a wand and it behooves one to have options."

"Aw, shucks. I was half-hoping y'all were gonna say you kept guardian monsters and your cool inventions and supplies in here."

"I do," Foop said easily, making a left turn as his claws scratched across the stones. "However, you asked why the castle itself had these passages, not what I use them for, and we're not going anywhere near the old storerooms anyway. I'm the only one with a key to the hidden chamber down there, but you can't let my father find out- he's convinced Mother ate it."

"I won't." She paused, then added slyly, " _Nebula_."

"Please don't call me that," he grunted. "Tarrow knows I've heard it more tonight than I can just about stand."

"Aw, but it's so cute."

"Yes, entirely. Here." Tapping six times in various places around a patch of stone between two twisting cracks in the wall, he tugged the door inward. It was made of threedspiral, actually, so it was plenty lightweight and swung easily and in silence. Foop felt a thrill spin down his spine from crown to chiropatagium anyway- his muscles were bigger now, his movements more fine, and leaving the secret passage turned out to be a lot easier than it had been only a few days ago.

"The tunnelly-do opens straight into your pad," Kelsia observed, stepping after him. "That's an awful design, ain't it?"

Foop trailed his eyes around the long bedroom, hung with a single rosewood-colored curtain over the window, with withering vines crawling up the red-tinted corner pillars. His purple coffin of a bed nestled on its curled golden feet against the far wall. Hinged lid closed. Faithful Skullbeary hidden from view (He was planning to shove the stuffed red and white toy beneath his pajamas before he moved out of here tonight). An ebony desk had been shoved into another corner, although the fact that it was a desk could only really be gleaned through the context clues of all the heaps of paper that blanketed it. He told her, "I take care to set up defensive charms when I plan to sleep if I feel the need. And it won't matter so much anymore from here on forward. The coffin and the, um, table will be put away and we'll convert this place into my study room. I'll be sleeping in the roosting room with my parents and their respective camarillas now."

"Huh," Kelsia said, running her fingers across a line of dust on the nearest bookshelf. Foop wished she wouldn't do that- it tasted so judgmental in his mouth. She sat on the second coffin that made up his diaper-changing table (From when he was so much younger- of course he didn't need it now!) and crossed her legs at the ankles. "Can't say I'm so envious, mate. Anti-wisps aren't much for hanging upside-down, 'cuz… y'all get it. Moth wings."

Foop chuckled dryly as he began the hunt for those biology notes. "Ha. I would be lying if I insisted Hiccup and I weren't a tad uncertain about the whole hanging-upside-down deal ourselves. Two straight years of sleeping in prison and forty-four more spent with a coffin for a bed tends to do that to you, I imagine. With the shedding ceremony and all, tonight will be our first night trying. We'll all be together like family, or some rot."

"Yeah… y'all remember I don't have a family, maybe. Abandoned when it wasn't even healthy t'leave the brood pouch. I just hang out around the fringes of the forest with some guys."

Pause.

"Right. I had forgotten." The anti-fairy bounced a clump of papers lightly against his desk, straightening them each time they hit. Setting them aside again, he took up a black file folder and began to leaf through its contents. "I hope you've enjoyed the party here tonight, then. Hiccup thought he spotted you about earlier, but I wasn't paying all that much attention and thereafter blew it off. All you anti-will o' the wisps have that same black and red six-spot burnet moth pattern in your wings."

Kelsia waved. "G'day in there, Hiccup."

"Duly noted, and I presume he'd like me to return your greeting on his behalf."

"He's not gonna say 'Hi' himself?"

"That's not how it wor- Ah, here it is!" Foop drew three sheets of stapled paper from the black folder. Twisting with a snap of his heels, he crossed the room to Kelsia and presented them with a flourish. "I hope you'll find my analyses and conclusions as riveting as I did."

"Hey, anything written in your hand's bound to be better'n what I could get from Poof Prime; li'l tucker ain't been quite the same since the Wisp-Marigold switched classrooms, know what I'm saying? Do y'all mind if I step outside the castle and _poof_ back to my place to finish copying these? This wand's running low on juice and I left my signature stamp behind. I'll return 'em to you when we get to class tomorrow."

"Keep them- I used a P.A.W.S. to ' _ping'_ up a digi-stream copy and submitted it into the W.E.B. program hours ago." Foop hovered at her shoulder, one sharp elbow braced against the lid of the coffin as he watched her skim through the pages. The other hand rubbed at his throat. Smoke, he had a throat now! "Now then, is that all you wanted?"

"Sure deal, mate," she said, creasing and pocketing the papers. "Catch y'all at school when we get off break. Lab partners again for Tuesday, as usual?"

"That sounds fine."

Kelsia tipped her black crown and started for the tunnel passageway again. Foop tilted his crown in return and leaned back against his coffin, crossing his ankles much the same way she had.

Then he decided that maybe he wasn't quite ready to return to the dull night of standing by himself and scratching his collar after all, and darted past her to block the door. When Kelsia cocked her head, Foop extended his thin hand towards her. "Would you care to step out where the music is louder and dance for a song or three, m'lady?"

"Ehhh…" She shook her head. "That ain't really my style. You know how we anti-wisps are, mate. We don't much like being tied down."

"It was my understanding that you liked to be wooed."

"Mm. Can we skip the dance? I'm underdressed in my cute t-shirt and shorts and I'm not feeling it. Dunno if I want your pa's eyes following us around the floor. But if you want, we can just hang out for a bit as y'all walk me t' the door. I gotta go write this, 'member."

"Hanging out sounds delightful." He took a step back, pushed the passage open, and waved her through. "Could I grab you a bite before you go?"

"Sure, I guess, but neither of y'all has to. And you're definitely not going to pull any sickeningly-cutesy feeding-me ritual, let me tell ya."

Foop wrinkled his round nose. "How revolting. Come on, I know a back passage that will help us avoid most of the crowd."

"Cool." Keeping her hands in her pockets, Kelsia trailed after him. "Did y'all want to talk about something?"

"We can talk about me. I've made plans to erect a silent alarm system that will alert me when the anti-lawn gnomes and sprites enter the gardens to crawl into Mother's plants. Then I'll go hunting. I know it's sadistic, but I'd like to taunt the thieves while they're tied up, and only let them go if they bribe me well enough. Perhaps stick a tag on them so I know which ones haven't learned their lesson if they double back. Hahaha!"

"I've taken up knitting," she said, ignoring him.

He sniffed. "How horribly dull. Wouldn't you rather discuss how I conquered Mr. Splinter's class in art while my class and yours were out at recess?"

"Nah, not really. I'd rather knit y'all a sweater. Red one, maybe." She shoved a handful of peanut M&Ms into her mouth. How long had she been holding onto those? "Anyway, if y'all're both just making small talk then I'm gonna skip."

"Small talk? I erected a throne out of easels, enslaved the masses to paint my portrait on pumpkins, and ruled my empire with a paintbrush sceptar and newspaper hat!"

Kelsia flicked a wrist, a single bracelet rattling. "Sure, but that's ol' buck teeth to the curls now, arctic blue. You take over a lot of things."

Foop sighed in acknowledgement through his fangs and eased open the door that would let them out back into the main hallway, just around the corner from the castle's foremost door. "Are you certain you don't want that dance?"

"Lemoncake, the day I dance for y'all's the day I decide I don't care cinders about my image and life is meaningless." She fluttered her fingers in good-bye before tapping her wand against the bars over the nearest window. After squeezing her small body through it, rolling into a sticker bush, and giving him a thumbs up to signal she was all right, the anti-will o' the wisp shook herself off and jumped into the air.

"Watch for the strobe lights!"

"Yeah!"

"Oh- and the automated arrow-launching defense system! And the portcullis, too! And the spikes on that bridge! And the barbed wire! And the-! … Never mind. I suppose you'll survive. Ah, well," Foop murmured as Kelsia disappeared from the reach of his sonar and into the dark, seeking a smoother patch of the energy field to _anti-poof_ from. He'd just have to find some other way to take his mind off that incredibly, horribly, absolutely awful cravat. As he took a step back and loosened the tie yet again, he had the thought that perhaps spiking the lemonade bowl with caffeine straight from the Anti-Pixie Isle gingertie trees would be an entertaining way to end his night after all.


	25. (30) Gaining the Upper Hand

_Summary:_ Norm is bound to grant wishes when set free. Sanderson has a grip on his tail. He has questions, Norm has answers.

 _Characters:_ Norm, Sanderson, Wanda, Cosmo, Juandissimo, Cupid, Jorgen

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "?" / "Saving Grace"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **30\. Gaining the Upper Hand** ("Fairy Idol")

 _Year of Sky; Winter of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

"So. When can I expect to receive the royalties for, I don't know, the three of you _stealing my song_ and performing it on interplane television as though it were your own?"

"In the name of wicks and wax," Norm groaned as he squished himself deeper between the leather cushions on the dirty tan couch, "is he _still_ going on about that?"

"It's a parody," came the snappish reply of the lawn gnome in question. His name was Fennel or something, or it wasn't. "We don't owe you jack dirt."

Wanda, sitting on Norm's right, _poof_ ed up a small watch with that Timmy Turner kid's beaver-toothed image in the middle of it. "Well, they've been bantering on and off for twenty minutes now. What is Jorgen doing out there?"

"Licorice," said Cosmo with utter seriousness, refilling his styrofoam cup with murky-looking water from the dispenser for what had to be the eleventh time.

"I'm just saying," the pixie sneered in the background, "you ought to have cited me for credit on air. I have mixtapes and record deals and albums and greeting cards, and I'm trying to turn a profit."

"It's a popular song. We didn't have to personally award you no credit."

"That's not entirely how the music industry works."

"It's a freakin' parody."

"You knew I was right there!"

Norm, who wasn't in the mood for turn around to watch, conjured a miniature version of the pixie into his palm with a bored _gong_. This one made the same two-fingered rolling hand gesture as the original as its rant continued, but after it reached, "And another thing, under _Pixie World v. Starshine Studios-_ " he took pleasure in flicking it into the furthest backstage corner. The tiny creature bounced off the wall and landed in the cobwebbed corner behind the trash can. Direct hit. Twenty points to Mudlip.

"They have to stop someday," chirped Cosmo, trotting over with his water cup turned upside-down. "He still has to sing. Maybe he'll need a new song now. He has the money to buy one. Or he could pirate one illegally off the digi-stream. But he'll have to act now if he wants to score a good deal. Thirty minutes or it's absolutely free." Cosmo thought for another several seconds, then went for his wand. An anchovy pizza materialized in front of him in a dry _poof_ of pink smoke. The space just in front of Cosmo coincidentally also happened to be the space above Norm's head. Norm was too slow to register the thought that _Hey, maybe I want to_ gong _to that other couch before this clumsily-put-together meatbread splatters in my hair_ , but he at least managed to stick his hands out to catch the thing. He had the soggy crust of a large triangular slice in each fist as the rest of the mess oozed from his grip and into his lap.

"Hey-hey! Not bad. And I thought the word you were going to focus on was 'pirate'. You know, considering those gray-suited clone drones' habit for waving metal around and taking over anything the light touches. Plus, they already have the boats, even if you wand-twirlers still don't let 'em fly them, last I checked." Norm, just to remind everyone that he wasn't bothered by this turn of events and that it was all his own idea anyway, took a bite of the piece in his left hand. Honestly it wasn't bad. Just damp and dripping in Fairy magic residue. And… peanut butter?

With a light sigh through her nostrils, Wanda flicked her wand and _poof_ ed the remainder of the pizza out of Norm's lap and over to the desecrated refreshment table in the corner. Cosmo downed the remainder of his water (of which there wasn't much, the cup being upside-down and all), and crushed the styrofoam against his own head. Sticky white flakes of it dangled from his bright green bangs and the creases of his tan-brown palms.

"Cosmo, we're supposed to be thinking about our song. It's the only way we'll be able to squeeze back into the Fairy godparents roster without having to take our certification tests all over again."

"Silly, silly Wanda," he _tsk tsk_ ed. "We've sung 'Floating With You' more times than I've had my brain replaced. We're fine!"

She bobbed over to brush his hair. "You don't have a brain right now, sweetie."

"Ah! Then I must engage in a quest to find it!" So saying, the irritating little fairy _poof_ ed himself into a giant green eyeball, with a _Do not feed the defective_ sign somehow dangling from his… neck-body… like a collar with a tag.

"Trench coats, a magnifying glass, and a tilted-down fedora to boot," Norm drawled. "Right on schedule- I was just looking for another reason not to subscribe to 'Dress Like an Idiot Monthly'."

"Cosmo! What the heck are you supposed to be?"

He blinked his… face. "Duh, I'm a _private eye_."

Wanda puffed her cheeks and shook her head as her husband floated away. The pixie and the lawn gnomes shut up.

"Hey, maybe while he's out looking, he'll find you both a new job, since it's looking more and more like you're going to need one." Norm's eyes followed a gray mouse scurrying between several slats in the walls. It ran up a dangling rope and disappeared into the rafters. He pointed two fingers after it. "I thought there wasn't oxygen in Fairy World?"

"There's enough." Wanda fluffed her curl and whirred after Cosmo.

That left Norm with two slices of soggy anchovy-and-peanut-butter-laden pizza, and he wasn't sure what the best thing to do with them was. On the one hand, the peanut butter would stick to his teeth and dry out his mouth, potentially ruining his chances at winning the competition, cheating him of his chance to improve his circumstances, denying him from achieving his full revenge on a certain pink-hatted loser he wasn't particularly fond of in the least, and leaving him with no choice but to crawl home and wait out the next day or two with McBadbat until the kid finally got around to making the last of his three allotted wishes and mercifully stoppered him up in his lava lamp again with no need to look at those horrendous teeth or dirty living conditions a moment longer.

On the other hand, pizza.

Deciding that the peanut butter staining his teeth wouldn't be fully digested before it was his turn to go on and therefore wouldn't make it all the more difficult for him to whip out his genie magic to clean it off, Norm took another bite. As he was swallowing, something soft closed around his tail about four inches from the tip. " _Gihk!_ " he sputtered, his shoulders jolting up. He slapped the smooth hand backwards as he twisted around. "Whoa, whoa there, my little square showpony. Do not. Touch. The tail."

"I let you go."

Norm, setting the pizza aside (he still hadn't cleaned the sauce stains from his clothes, but he'd get to that), twisted a long pinky in his ear. "Come again, squeak? I can't hear you over the sound of me eyewashing the living embers out of my sockets at the way you're dressed. Did you lose a fight with a wall of drying paint, or with a yarn documentary?"

The speaker was… what was his name again? Sidney… Sawyer… Sandy… Some sort of M.E. Sanderson- wasn't that the name from the paperwork? Norm had dropped his own right on top of it (grateful, at least, for the ability to fill it out instantly with the near-limitless magic offered by connection to his lamp in that sense).

Anyway, it was that pixie chump who'd been arguing with the lawn gnomes. A pixie, of all things, competing on the stage (still in that gray suit to boot; even _Norm_ couldn't help feeling a slight squicked-out sensation when faced with so little color and so many sickeningly-precise stitches). He'd probably buzzed over with his weird square wings suddenly and silently - like an unpleasant deadline - while Norm had been distracted with the bubbly fairy twits.

Sanderson held his right wrist with his left hand and wiggled the fingers. He floated annoyingly close to Norm's eyes, which seemed to be routine with his people- higher off the ground than the uncertain Anti-Fairies but much, much lower than the self-righteous wand-waving twits he usually seemed to bump into.

"I let you go just now," Sanderson said again in monotone, brushing at his knuckles. As near to Norm's eye-level as he was, and even though he was taller than most fairies Norm had run across, he still had to tilt his head slightly back in order to peer at him. The genie could barely detect the dusty-purple glint of his irises behind the cowlicks in his hair (let alone the tinted lenses).

"That you did, push-pop. Careful you don't flap so hard you pass out. That pompadour looks liable to crush your lungs and suffocate you while you're down."

The pixie continued on breezily, as though he hadn't interrupted. "So I was wondering, does that mean I can have three wishes?"

"Aha. Aha." Norm took his own, very-similar shades by the back of one arm and tugged them a tad closer to his face. "That's a cute try, cupcake tin, and you're not the first to pull it, but I'm not in the habit of doing favors for my fellow magic channelers. It's bad for business, you not having physical hearts to pull energy from." That was the nice thing about Yugopotamians, his momma had always said- when it came to hearts, they had four. You could really grant some game-changing wishes with a Yugopotamian for a master.

Sanderson pulled out his ugly cell phone. "That's understandable, but I was curious. I've traveled up and down the reaches of Earth and Fairy World, and even most of Anti-Fairy World, and one time we even looked into setting up a business on one of Jupiter's moons, but I haven't yet met enough genies to satisfy my fascination."

"Eh, we're tough as frozen hotcakes to come by." Norm's attention moved to his fingernails. Brace-Face's non-contagious enthusiasm had chipped the one on the left ring finger, and all the others were soiled just from bobbing about beneath the kid's dirty roof. "I might try checking out Canada, in your shoes. Whole country's built on a Genie graveyard. Dozens of lamps, buried there beneath the snow somewhere, just hibernating forever with no one to rub the warmth back into them."

Sanderson obviously wasn't listening. Or maybe he was, but the rapid drilling of his thumbs against the keys of the little gray device suggested otherwise. Guy didn't have much of an attention span, did he? How old would he be by genie terms? 25,000, maybe, and then some? Too old to have gone this long without learning proper manners, in any case.

After almost two minutes, which Norm spent relishing his odd if somehow intriguing pizza, it seemed to occur to the pixie that his 'conversation partner' hadn't been speaking for a time. He raised his head again. "What about one question?"

"Eh?" Still chewing, Norm touched his tail to the floor as he reoriented himself on the couch. "Better speak softly and _ping_ up a current passport. You don't want someone to phone the immigration offices now that you've just come back to reality. It won't injure your cardboard feelings if I don't offer you a pizza, I hope. You could spill on that tasty treat you're wearing, and I presume the 1920s will want it returned to them in prime condition."

"I let you go," Sanderson said, for the third time now, like a mimic. Like a clone. The cell phone went back inside the inner left pocket of his suit coat, and he smoothed the fabric with his fingertips. "If I'm not allowed to request three wishes, can you answer one question? Any sort of question?"

" _Yeeeeeahh_ , I can," sighed the genie. He flicked his tongue around his teeth. "The big dilemma first and foremost is, do I _want_ to?"

"You should."

The innocent response made Norm roll his eyes, but only halfway. Seriously, what was Jorgen McGorgen _doing_ out there? Had no one taught the guy how commercial breaks actually worked? Was he honestly waiting for the audience to 'come back'? They'd been cooped up back behind the stage for awhile now, and Norm was starting to run out of ways to put on a pleasant facade to his fellow competitors. Most of his masters spoke little to him once they learned his powers. It was one, two, three, good show everyone, job well done, and this old man came rolling home. But _sitting around_ , making _small talk_ , participating in _social interaction_ … At least female genies didn't tend to be a fickle crowd. The majority of his conversations tended to be composed of short sentences, cheesy flirtations, and sarcastic quips.

He wanted to bury himself fully beneath the cushions of the couch and curl up with the tip of his tail resting on his nose. He hadn't had much time to practice his song, and the longer he was kept here to drum out the ticking seconds against his thigh, the more the possibility of becoming the fool was beginning to chew on him.

"Or," Sanderson said, watching him, "you're being really quiet, so… I can excuse myself from this conversation."

The lawn gnomes began to jeer.

He started to bob away, but Norm snapped his tail around his ankle and yanked the pixie back to the couch. "Hey, slow down, what's your hurry? I get that it's 'no rest for the wicked' and all that, but you gotta learn never to turn your back on someone you want something from." He lifted his left hand, fingers poised. "Sure, gel-bell- I'll grant you this request. Answers to any one question in the universe, hit me. How many roads does a man walk in his lifetime? Who's afraid of the big bad foop? Why is it that people who wear non-prescription glasses for the aesthetic are essentially immune to magic? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck? Where did Cotton-Eye Joe come from, where did he go?"

"Do genies have belly buttons?"

Norm was so startled, he almost snapped his fingers. They hovered there, tapping, and he only stared.

"Do genies have belly buttons?" Sanderson repeated, pressing his palms together and rubbing briskly, sharply, smartly, precisely. "Additionally, do they have parents, or are you born from the eruptions of volcanoes like in the nursery rhyme? _So instead of leaving me ever ever after awaiting your return, throw me in the mountain where the genies all are born._ _Bring me to the peaks where the smoke clouds the skies, drop me in the Earth where the fire never dies. For I was born an ember, swaddled up in flames, return me to my bottle, don't force me out again._ "

He sung it in haunting monotone, but without a trace of sarcasm. Norm cocked his favorite of his two eyebrows.

"As much as it _pains_ me - it really does - to ruin your innocent outlook on life, my pointy-hatted clock-puncher, the song's not about the origin of genies so much as it's about a girl who wants one last night with her boyfriend just after he tells her he's leaving her for a dollface with 'diamonds in her hair' and 'flowers on her lips'."

"Mm… no? I'm pretty sure it's about a damsel who'd rather die than kiss a sniveling drake who's been coming on to her all night at a party." Sanderson bobbed a hair closer. Norm could just make out his pupils behind his sunglasses now. He'd wondered if the pixie even had any, because he'd met their Head in the courtroom once and missed most of his own hearing just squinting at the guy and trying to solve that puzzle. "So then, does that mean genies do have belly buttons?"

"Sure, either we have belly buttons or we'd have to lay eggs."

"Why?"

Moving his jaws, wriggling his tongue in the spaces behind his teeth where the peanut butter stuck the worst, Norm propped an elbow on the back of the couch and flicked Sanderson on the nose. "Because, kitten-tot, when a foolish master leaves a genie to head out roaming with at least one wish still left to grant, and when a mommy and daddy genie love each other very much, and their tails twine together and it's plenty warm outside and… You're… not interrupting me. First time for everything, eh, pumpernickel? You can't even predict where I'm going with this, can you? They never gave you this conversation in business school?"

"H.P. says even a small splash of cold water will kill a small genie," Sanderson said with utter seriousness, settling himself on his knees on the couch. His wings folded along his back with a vague crunching sound (Good- Norm didn't have much experience with spinning objects and the fluttering had been making him dizzy). "Or a 'candle', I believe you call your nymphs? That's why it has to be warm weather for conception to occur. So, I was wondering, if you care to inform me, does that mean the little baby genie inside will die if the pregnant father visits a place with a low-level outside temperature?"

Norm glanced over the couch's back to see if anyone was listening in on their… interesting choice of conversation. Cosmo had found licorice, which Wanda was trying to wheedle away from him. Not easy when he'd gone into hermit crab form and was swinging from a particularly strong cobweb. Cupid and Juandissimo were floating beside a vanity, arguing over a quiver of the cherub's arrows. The lawn gnomes had overturned a coffee table on the far side of the backstage area and were apparently arming themselves for Sanderson's next venomous attack. They ducked when they caught his glance.

To the pixie, he said, "Pregnant mother, actually. But nah, it's rare for a genie to score top marks on the death thing. We just have amniotic sacs filled with fire instead of water, that's all. Keeps the li'l candle nice and toasty. It would have to at least as cold as Canada in January to kill an unborn genie."

"And then you get belly buttons." Sanderson's upper lip twitched almost an entire centimeter. They were breaking all the records today, weren't they? Evidently, he was delighted to learn this critical piece of information. He braced his hands to either side and tilted his face towards the ceiling. Content. Norm folded his arms.

"Look, cough drop. I kinda take it as a personal insult that you thought it was worth wasting my all-dominating, rule-free, supreme cosmic powers of the universe on a question like that. What, did you not think I could handle anything more?" Now he looped his smoky, shifting tail around Sanderson's arm near his wrist and dragged himself closer to the pixie. "Am I stupid to you?"

He'd gained the upper hand- physically, and metaphorically. Sanderson wriggled his fingers against Norm's grip, the limb they were connected to now held above his head. "I meant no offense… Norman, wasn't it? Norm? I was simply curious."

"Odd topic to be curious about in another class of beings. Someone set you up on a wild swanee chase?" He asked the question in a mostly disinterested fashion, because really, who sends people around to ask stuff like that? And as expected, Sanderson denied it. He withdrew his tail and they lapsed into silence. Norm ran the opening lines of his song through his head once again. Sanderson checked the time on his phone.

"Is it true that your heads open?" Norm finally couldn't resist asking. It startled the pixie enough that he withdrew the hand that had been finger-crawling back for the tip of Norm's blue tail. "I'm not the clown here so I wouldn't call myself the leading expert on 'fair', but it seems I should get to ask a question about Fairykind anatomy since you got to hear a snatch of mine."

"Yes. It's where we keep some reproductive organs and our cores."

Oh. How-? But-? Hmm. Never mind.

"A simple 'yes' would have sufficed." Licking the last of the sauce from his thumb - the pizza really hadn't been that bad - he tapped a nail against his chest. "I keep my own core right around this general location, although I am prone to giving it away to honeys on the weekends. And we simpletons refer to it as a 'heart'. 100% pure fire, that."

"And it makes the smoke for your tails, I've read." Sanderson reached up to lay his palm against Norm's chest. The genie slapped it away before it could connect.

"Hey, you did not get permission to touch me."

After a moment's consideration, Sanderson teleported in a short stack of paperwork with a chime and lifted his pen from behind his ear. "Would it hurt you if I did? That's unexpected."

Norm squinted. It was impossible to tell whether the guy was being sarcastic or if he was honestly puzzled. "It won't _hurt_ anything-"

"Then why do I need your permission? I have papers now, but I thought I ought to ask."

Now the genie just rolled his eyes. Shifting in his seat so he was angled away from the curious gray-hatted oddity, he snorted, "I don't really make it a habit of letting pixies smear their dirty hands on me. You'll stain my shirt with your greasy ink stains."

Sanderson thought about this. "Is that your reason? I've been informed that the ink we use in our official practice isn't quite so greasy as everyone else seems to claim it is."

"Well, my clearly-too-innocent paper boy, it implies affection, and I have done and will continue to do way better than you."

"I must ask you to clarify what it is that you're doing better than me at."

One more time, Norm rolled his eyes and began to finger his sunglasses. "Hey, forget it, okay? It's not your fault if your brain is so stuffed with legal terms and grammar mechanics that you can't retain certain other valuable aspects of information."

"I never forget anything," Sanderson said seriously, _ping_ ing the paperwork off again. "Pixie brains are wired for attentiveness, and on top of that, I'm a drone. It takes exactly 75 centigrams of forget-a-cin to wipe a pixie's mind of a single minute of the timestream." Absentmindedly, he plucked up the tip of Norm's tail again. And once more, Norm smacked it out of his hands.

"Would you stop touching that? By embers- for a species that claims to remember everything, you sure can't follow directions."

"I've noticed that it squishes."

" _Yes_. And stop. It's yours as much as your eyesore of a hat is mine." He sat back and groaned. "Aw, you made me smudge my shades, smart-dart."

"Here." Sanderson reached into a pocket of his gray suit and drew out a small, crisp package of white wipes.

"Eh… You'll have to get those for me, pint-size. I don't know how to open tiny crinkly bags. Actually, I think 'pint-size' fits you- you're about the size and shape of a milk carton."

"You don't know how to tear things open?"

"What can I say, tin-grin? I live in a lamp, secluded from the world." Norm mimed taking the packet and ripping it with his teeth. Sanderson copied the gesture smugly. For one second, he almost looked proud that he could do something that 'didn't come naturally' to a genie.

But the second immediately after that, he spat out a trail of saliva dripping with white bubbles. The genie got a laugh out of that.

"Hey, whaddya know, huh? I always thought the stories might have exaggerated, but I guess the monkey-see, monkey-do game really is easy to pull over your dull gray minds."

Sanderson twitched one of his eyebrows. "Did you just trick me into biting this for the sheer smoof of it?"

"Who, me?" Norm plucked just one wipe from the foil packet in the pixie's hands and flapped it out with a flourish. "I didn't make you do anything you couldn't have prevented."

"Hm." Sanderson gazed at the remaining wipes in their little bundle. And then, to Norm's shock, he put his tongue to them again. He ran the taste around his mouth, smacking softly as the genie watched over the rims of his deeply-tinted sunglasses, and then he shook his head. "No. The research is conclusive. I do not like licking soapy wipes."

"I'm glad we got that figured out, buttercup. Smoof, how much longer are they planning to leave us sitting on our tushes back here?" Instinct prevented him from snapping his fingers, but Norm mimed the gesture lightly anyway as he used his other hand to finish cleaning his sunglasses. "Keep it moving, dragonflies, keep it moving. Some of us have places to 'port and wishes to grant."

"We're running late," Sanderson blurted. He craned his neck. "Jorgen said it was my turn in ten minutes. However, it has now been ten and a half. I can feel it; time ticks in my head. Now everything is collapsing. Something's gone wrong and the end of the cloudlands is imminent. Should that happen, then I'll never get my chance to sing."

Norm clicked his tongue. The shades went on his nose again. He tapped them once so they slid down a bit further. "Little high-strung, aren't you little pen-pushers?"

Sanderson had set his teeth. His fingers were locked into the creases of the tan couch cushions beneath him. He wasn't quite rocking back and forth, but his body was certainly tense enough that Norm could have tapped a finger on his nose and tipped him over. "Permit me to correct you. I wouldn't refer to my state of mind as high-strung. I'm functioning at peak performance."

"I'm guessing that you wear the glasses to hide that constant twitch in your lower eye, eh, sunshine?"

"Why are we running _late_?"

That got a whistle out of the genie, and he reached up to tip his fez. "Hey, you actually managed to place emphasis on a word that time. If you were my maître d', I'd tip you extra."

Sanderson settled his wings against his spine again and stared forward. "We've been here for awhile. I hope H.P. hasn't left." After another moment of apparently dwelling on that idea, fingering his shiny black tie, he slipped from the couch and skimmed towards the edge of the stage where he could catch a glimpse out into the crowd.

Norm turned his attention briefly on Cosmo and Wanda, still arguing over licorice, but now at the opposite end of the backstage area. It seemed that a squabble and chase had broken out; Wanda now had Cosmo the hermit crab pinned to the wooden wall, a mass of licorice raised in a no-nonsense fist above the padded swirl in her hair. Juandissimo had probably just shot the water dispenser, because he looked startled and Cupid had a hand clapped over his eyes. Liquid guzzled to the floor. When Sanderson came back, the genie flicked a thumb over his shoulder.

"You've got building floor plan senses, right? Think you could use that sharp hat to point me towards the nearest watering hole that doesn't look like it came out the wrong end of a lawn gnome? I've got peanut butter sticking my teeth together."

Sanderson fixed his shades. "There's a vanity over there in the back with honeytonic. That would be for gargling. It can help to clear out the throat and nasal passages. That could potentially help you."

"Ah, well then… Were you able to get your money back?"

"I get my money back from a lot of things. You'll need to clarify."

"I meant since the honeytonic obviously didn't do you any good."

The pixie said nothing. Then, "I don't get it."

Norm rubbed his knuckles into Sanderson's head, which was a disturbing sensation, given that their skulls were apparently as square as they looked. It was like scraping his hand against a tree stump with peeling bark. "It'll come to you if you hear yourself speak with that low drawl much longer, hey?"

"Well." Still twitching, Sanderson cracked his knuckles. "It seems it would be a better use of my time to finish chewing out those pesky thieving lawn gnomes- Did you hear how they ripped off my song?"

"Uh, no." If Norm had to listen to those snapping voices back and forth and back and forth on the same topic for another moment, he was going to lose his steam. He'd already obliterated the Canadian-imported nuts on the dirty refreshment table. "I mean, yes, I heard. Hey, forget those red-capped chumps." He used his pinky to lift his sunglasses. "I enjoyed our chat, pointy hat, and I've got something more I wanna say before you go prancing off like a sprite."

"Oh. Okay." Sanderson, possibly puzzled, sat down again. Not a fighter, was he? Just a forthcoming little fellow.

"You gave me the advice about gargling before I head out on stage, so I'll pay you back with a bit of advice of my own." Norm placed his arm around Sanderson's shoulders and pulled the pixie a tad closer to his own body. He tapped him on the tip of a nose that simultaneously managed to be pointed and round. The perfect average. "Since that big-headed boss of yours has obviously neglected to teach you the facts of life, it just seems right that I fill in for you here."

"Please don't."

He'd half expected the guy to say 'Under blah blah blah court case, this is harassment' or 'I'll sue'. Norm clucked his tongue again and flipped his tail away from Sanderson's creeping fingers. "We're skipping the reproductive parts, Captain Gray-dient. I wouldn't even know where to start with beings with legs. It's your horrendous lack of social skills that I'm here to fix you up with. It's the least I can do, since even I can't work a miracle with that square face. You could draw out architecture plans with a straight-edge like that."

"I knew a selkie once who used to…"

"So I was thinking we needed to get you a girlfriend. Or a friend at all. And Norm the Genie is no one's friend, if that wasn't clear to your close-minded head. One-man soul. Never to change."

Sanderson eased Norm's hand from his shoulder. "I'm no one's friend either."

"You too, huh? Well…" Norm trailed his eyes about their surroundings once again. The lawn gnomes had taken care of the water problem. Juandissimo sat sadly in the corner while Cupid lectured him for snatching his precious lovey-dovey arrows. The genie gestured with his tail towards the she-fairy tapping on the shell of the quaking hermit crab in her palm. "You can keep a trade secret, can't you, little man? Perfect. Here, the key to winning a girl is all confidence. Act big to make it big. Before you head home tonight, you ought to strike up a conversation with her."

"She's married," Sanderson said in a tone that might have passed for surprise under proper scrutiny. "Legally. Can't you see the matching notches along the distal costas of their wings?"

"It's just for practice. If you already know you'll get shot down, you've got nothing to lose. And, you'll find yourself honing a new skill, which is _waaay_ better than arguing with some silly _lawn gnomes_ , right?"

"I'm afraid not."

That time he spoke with a voice that could have withered paint from the wall or curdled couch cushions, and possibly did. Norm chuckled and wrapped his tail around the lower portion of his own torso, content to lie back and bask in his own warmth until it was his turn to hit the stage. For the first time, he actually bothered to snap his fingers and _gong_ the pizza sauce stains off his sky-blue blazer. "Like I said, it's confidence that's key. That's the tale as old as time."

Sanderson adjusted the arms of his shades with both hands. He seemed to fiddle with them an awful lot. He cleared his throat. "Well, spontaneity was always a major factor in the origin of the Pixies, and perhaps your 'fast and forward' approach will benefit me in life. Anyhow, I thank you for your time."

"What can I say? You've never had a friend like me." He drawled the word 'friend' to make clear to Sanderson exactly what he thought of it. Sanderson, in the spirit of someone who knew every Disney song by heart, smiled very faintly and nodded.

It was then that Jorgen - fezzin' _finally_ \- strolled through the backstage area, although from the opposite direction Norm would have expected. He glanced at a trailing list in his hands, then crumpled it up. "Pixie, you are on in one hundred and thirty seconds."

Good. Perhaps those lawn gnomes could use his time out onstage to make a getaway. Norm patted him on the shoulder. "Splash 'em to ashes, paper boy."

Sanderson leapt from his seat and beat his way towards the edge of the stage. There he hovered (Norm had forgotten how irritating that buzz in his wings was) while Jorgen roused the crowd with one of his usual unflattering introductions. Wanda and Cosmo (both now back in fairy form and licorice-free) leaned against the wall beside the pixie, squinting beneath his shoulder and into the crowd.

In that snap-second just after his name had been called but before he strolled onto the stage, Sanderson turned full around to face the two fairies. Hands in fists, head tilted back, he looked Wanda in the eyes and clipped, "Check me as I whip out some serious beats, yo."

Then, with a satisfied nod to himself, the pixie swept out to face the music. Cosmo and Wanda exchanged raised-eyebrow glances. One of the elf officials behind Norm pressed Play on a chunky boombox. What followed was a churning, rattling, beeping, almost mechanical tune, seeping from the overhead speakers. Sanderson grasped the front of his suit in one fist. For a couple of heartbeats he hovered, head bowed. Then, as the music kicked into gear, he ripped off his coat and shirt to reveal that underneath it all he was wearing…

… underwear.

Wanda looked straight at Norm and held both arms out in the direction of the partially-stripped pixie, shrugging them like, _Are you proud of what you've done?_ "I didn't tell him to do that," the genie protested, but faint secondhand embarrassment prickled at the top of his scalp like an itch. On stage, Sanderson _ping_ ed in a fresh set of red clothes, complete with a solid, golden chain around his neck. How it didn't knock the guy out of the air, Norm honestly wondered about. He braced his shoulder against the wall and covered half his face with one thoughtful hand.

He had to admit, the guy put on a good show. It obviously wasn't his first time in front of a large audience, and his steely calm made Norm twist his tail into a light knot with envy.

Okay, so flinging his microphone across the stage so that the impact banged through the speakers and half the second stanza was drowned out- that was a bad idea. But the act of bunching himself into a ball and then bursting from it with squarish wasp wings turned into long dragonfly ones that shimmered with rainbows was certainly a clever touch. And who would've guessed earlier that pixies were willing to perform standing backflips for a crowd? Miniature sparkling fireworks rained over the stage in a unicorn's blood of colors as Sanderson touched down on the stage again and folded his arms tight.

… Then it was gone. Whether it was a money question, the strain of holding all that shapeshifting magic, or just done for effect, Sanderson _ping_ ed back into his gray suit. The pixie stood, stared into the silent crowd for a beat, then tucked his hands in his pockets and wandered from the stage and back to Norm's side.

"So," he droned, glancing up, "can I get some constructive criticism on my performance? I take it from your tilted eyebrows and tensed tail that it was not my best work."

"Aw, fez, sugarcube." Norm ran two fingers between his sunglasses and his eyes. On the bright side, Sanderson hadn't set the bar particularly high for the rest of them, so in a way he'd gained the upper hand here. "We gotta teach you when to drop a mic."


	26. (101) Back In Action

_Summary:_ Dancing with Cindy Vortex was great, but as she and the others head home, Timmy can't stop thinking about the anti-fairies.

 _Characters:_ Timmy, Wanda, Cosmo, Jimmy, Cindy, Sheen, Lizzie, Goddard, Hadley, Eryx, Andy, Anti-Cosmo, assorted anti-fairies

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Saving Grace" / "Think Positive"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **101\. Back in Action** ("When Nerds Collide")

 _Year of Soil;_ _Spring of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

Jimmy Neutron obviously had to go to the bathroom. He kept glancing its way across the interdimensional seam and whimpering when one "upbeat, boppy" tune trailed into the next. His teeth - quite small for such a large face - had been embedded in his lip for the last three Chip Skylark songs. Beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks. The kid just didn't have much of a poker face. With so many muscles there, it wasn't surprising he found it difficult to restrain himself.

"Dude," Timmy hissed in his ear as the notes at last began to bleed away, "why don't you just go?"

"Wha- Who needs to go to the bathroom? Not me! I don't need the bathroom!"

As he spoke, "Find Your Voice" trickled to a full end. The next song was a slow one. Clocking out time. Relief splashed across his pudgy features, and he offered Cindy's small, pale hands to Timmy and took off running for the sidelines. Grinning a triumphant buck-toothed grin, Timmy tugged the pretty blonde girl across the seam between her dark and bulgy dimension and his simple, brightly-colored one. Her high ponytail bounced.

"Actually, I, ah, have to go too, right," she said, skimming her fingertips across his shoulder with a nervous giggle. "Save me the next one, though. Come on, Libby."

"Huh?" Libby and Sheen were each individually dancing to a beat that didn't fit the current song. Was she wearing earbuds? She made a motion as though she were popping one out and twirling it reluctantly around her thumb. "Oh. Cindy girl, I got you. Catch me up."

Timmy's grin faded as the slow, waltz-like song - from Anastasia, maybe? - swirled up with full momentum. _Someone holds me safe and warm. Horses prance through a silver storm…_

"Man!" Sheen crashed back against the refreshment table, elbows propped. "This is some crazy science stuff you got in your universe, small-headed Timmy! Even the Ultralord diet from Episode 332, 'Deserting Desserts' didn't make me so flat!" Immediately he perked up. "Hey, if your dimension is all futuristic and junk, what season you got playing here? I want to binge-watch all of them before they come out back home in my world! I'll be champion of the fans!"

Timmy twitched his brows. "Uh, dude? 'The Ultralord Show' doesn't play in my universe."

"You what?"

"Yeah, no. We've got our own cartoons here." He scratched his chin. "Like, I remember flipping through channels the other day and seeing one about teams of two traveling across the desert on camels in a race around the world. The guys who got out were like this Canadian wizard with lightning powers and this girl with a Viking helmet."

Sheen shook his head, which ended up shaking most of his body, which made Timmy shield his face considering that the guy was thirteen years old and like, 5'10" to his own measly 4'2". "Surely you got _something_ good on the talkbox. I've got superhero cravings to satisfy before we part with such sweet, sweet sorrow. Come on, man, I'm not picky- throw me a bone! I'll even take one of those really little ones from the inside of your ear. I always thought the stapes was kinda cute."

"Well." Timmy's arm moved behind his neck. "We have the Crimson Chin. And unfortunately I still remember Bubble Butt Boy, or BBB, but _he_ went lame after he met Captain Good Gas Mileage. There's, uh… Naked Lad. And I really like Crash Nebula, but I mean, he's not _technically_ a real-"

"Nebula? You mean like, in outer space? You have a space superhero?" Sheen grabbed the front of Timmy's pink shirt with both hands and lifted him to his eyelevel. "I _must have_ this merchandise!"

"W-w-well, I'll get you some," Timmy stuttered out as the older boy shook him. "In fact, I brought some DVDs of the first two seasons here with me, over there by that stack of chairs… I wish."

Light glimmered across the two pins stuck to his collar. His curiosity sufficiently piqued, Sheen let Timmy fall and scurried off across the gym. Sighing through his nostrils, the ten-year-old stood, dusted himself off, and leaned back against the refreshment table. Almost instantly, his pins disappeared. The red plastic cups were joined by a new pair: one green and one pink.

"Why do girls think it's funny to go to the bathroom in groups like that anyway?" he muttered to them, trying not to glance at their wide eyes or give any indication that he was a boy who talked to inanimate objects.

The pink cup nudged his thin arm. "Aw, it's not over yet, sport. She said she'll dance with you when she comes back. I think she likes you and she's excited."

" _Yeah_ , but I didn't want Jimmy hovering around my shoulder the whole time fretting that I'll break her like some sort of pretty Easter egg. Hmph… How are the Anti-Fairies?"

"Still locked away," Cosmo-cup chirped. "And boy, am I happy about that. Or is it 'And cup, am I happy about that'? Anti- wings are creepy-scary and give me nightmares."

This statement was accented with a low growl like the crushing of a tin can. The pink cup rotated her eyes around to the small mechanical dog lying below the window behind her. Goddard was currently plugged into a wall socket (Jimmy had said something about "analyzing and cross-comparing various mechanical fluctuations of the incoming power supply in non-originating alternate dimensions and utilizing the Cartesian coordinate system in a scientific pattern by migrating along the walls in conjecture with the rotation of the Earth and appropriate passage of time to achieve maximum accuracy in the resulting energy measurements") but as his tail wagged, Timmy wasn't sure he'd stay that way for long. If Goddard were a real-life breed and not a super-cool robot who could blow up and fly, then he'd probably be a hunter. He had boxy ears.

Wanda said, "Oh, I hope Jorgen gets over his migraines and finishes with all that paperwork soon. I don't like having this butterfly net cube thing around. Having to be anywhere near it and this dimensional rift gives me the most awful headache."

Timmy nodded slowly as he massaged one sore heel and searched for the cause of Goddard's growling. A yellow squirrel perched on the windowsill, scratching at a few tufts of fur on his head. Crownless, but with origins undeniable. "Well, the other fairies seem to like it. That's like the fourth candy-colored animal to show up here in the last hour."

"On the contrary, Timmy," Wanda said blearily, "more likely he's checking it out because he can sense the Anti-Fairies tucked away inside of it and he wants to get it out of here."

"Huh. You know him?"

"Sorry, sport. Or if we _have_ met before, I can't get a read on his signals with how supersaturated with magic this whole place is."

"Super-what now?" He continued to stare, then unfolded his arms. "Hey, I've seen that yellow fairy outside the hardware store before, and around the street where Mr. Crocker lives… Yeah, I think it's the same one. The one who doesn't have a crown or anything. I wonder who his godkid is?"

"Crocker still lives with his mom, and maybe that makes him count as younger?" Cosmo offered, squinting. He'd been squinting up his eyes and jittering his teeth all night, and Timmy didn't blame him. Even _he_ , a mere human fifteen-year-old (er, ten-year-old), could pick up on the weird bubbly distorts in the universal energy field of magic. It was a humming sort of sound in his teeth, a burning sort of feel in his eyes, a sour sort of taste clinging to the roof of his mouth. It was only seven at night, but dozens of his schoolmates had already left to go home, their arms bright red with irritated skin and scratch lines due to so much contact with magical effervescence. Sooner or later, someone might start wondering why he himself wasn't breaking out. And he couldn't just tell them he was used to it.

"He's moving towards Jimmy's storage hypercube thing," Timmy said, still watching the mystery yellow fairy. It had squeezed itself beneath the windowsill and, ignoring the tempting treats keeping guard on the refreshment table, begun to creep down to Goddard's post. The mechanical dog flattened his ears and growled again.

"That's hardly a surprise. It's giving off massive waves of power and scrambling everyone's sensors for miles."

"… Okay, now he's chewing on it. Hey! Yellow!"

The squirrel glanced up, then abandoned the box and fled for the rift with Jimmy's dimension. Yapping up a hurricane, Goddard wrenched his plug from the socket (and part of the white brick wall with him) and raced after it. Timmy sprang upright. To Cosmo and Wanda, he spat all in one breath, "I know you can't really tell me about the other fairies around here, but there's no rule saying we can't follow him around, right?"

"What happened to waiting for Cindy?" Wanda protested, craning her neck. Er… cup body.

"Hello, short attention span in control here? Come on, he's getting away!" Timmy bolted for the rift, cutting across the dance floor and narrowly dodging familiar Dimmsdale faces and foreign Retroville kids. In a _poof_ of faint pink sparkles, Cosmo and Wanda appeared as rubber bracelets on his wrist. He jolted through a filmy curtain of magic straight after. Within a split-second, he grew two fingers, and another few inches taller. His arms and legs thickened to support his new bulging weight. His hair felt scratchier against the back of his neck. His teeth heavier. Even his eyelids seemed more hooded than before, and his breaths had to be extra deep to satisfy his warbled lungs.

"'scuse me- Sorry- That's not my dog- Coming through."

The squirrel dove behind the leg of another refreshment table. Goddard slammed into the thing with enough force to buckle it. The table collapsed on his head, dumping paper plates and party platters and a water cooler. As the dog struggled and whined beneath the weight, clicking and whirring his parts, the yellow squirrel scrambled out. It made a series of zig-zagging jumps and landed on four feet. Toes splayed. Fluorescent tail bristled. Timmy veered after it across the room again, but within seconds, it had vanished beneath a retro-looking radiator instead.

He dove after it anyway. This time it was his buck teeth that clanged on metal, and he could practically feel his pupils bumping around the rest of his eyeballs. Ow. His arm stayed wedged underneath, gripping a handful of loose fur, but no thrashing tail. The boy glanced frantically around, but his eyes hadn't fully adjusted to the swollen dimension. "Got you, rotten pest!" shouted another voice at the same moment as fingers squeezed his hand. Then, "Huh?"

When Timmy glanced to his right, he locked gazes with a girl wearing a sweater in three shades of dark blue, her long hair red and brown around her ears. Equally bulgy. An enormous white bowtie wrapped around her neck, tied in the front. The ribbons rippled.

"Hadley," he managed. "Hi."

She blinked. Then her hand slipped away. "Tim?"

"I like Timmy," he corrected, dropping the photorealistic yellow hairs he'd grabbed. Maybe next time. He rubbed his jaw. "What are you doing at my elementary school dance?"

"Um. Well, it's not against the rules for middle schoolers to come if their date asked them, right?"

Timmy popped an injured finger in his mouth. "I'll allow it."

"Yeah, um. Anyway, the magic here is off the charts. Eryx wanted to check it out." After fiddling with her bow, she stuffed her hands in her armpits and checked over her shoulder at a powder-blue budgie perched on a sill a few windows down. "Long story, but my date turned out to be a loony whose eyes never focused on anything. I can't even pronounce his home country, and he got barbecue sauce down his sweater, so I'm here alone now."

"Barbec-"

"Yes. Anyway. I was heading home until I got distracted with chasing the squirrel."

Timmy pricked his ears. "Hey yeah, me too. I was watching him, I mean."

She pointed to her teeth. "Family reunion?"

"Ahahahaha- No, no it's not. Try paranoia. Do you know his godkid?"

"That's what I was trying to figure out." Hadley frowned. "He's at the high school a lot - the one where my step-brother goes - and he knows my last name is Harrington, and I _know_ he's been spying for weeks. He never lets Eryx near him before he bolts. It creeps me out."

"Huh. Any chance you maybe know what his name is?"

Nod. Puffed cheeks. "Andy. I think. I think it's Andy. He kind of said it, until he ran off one time. But that's all the dirt I have. It's too bad my you-know-who doesn't get out around town much. Maybe he could pin down a little more info about who this dork is."

Eryx ruffled his feathers in an embarrassed way.

"Huh." Timmy glanced at his wrist. Sparkles from the disco ball swept across it, illuminating soft brown hairs in sharper colors than in his home universe. "Any ideas yet, you guys?"

"I had a penny called Andy one time," Cosmo offered, raising his voice a tad over the thumping of the music. Wanda shushed him softly.

Timmy shrugged at his kind-of sort-of not-entirely friend. "Sorry."

Hadley blew a curl of hair from her face. "Well, this is fine. I didn't want to catch him anyway. Okay, I'm out. See you around, Timmy? _Poof_ by my house if he starts acting worse around you or something, maybe. He kind of freaks me out, you know?"

"Sure."

"And spread the word?"

Timmy thought of Remy and Juandissimo, and inwardly cringed. "Will do."

At least they were still at the F.U.N. Academy. He wouldn't have to be seeing them for a long time.

After she'd straightened her bow and vanished into the crowd, Timmy peeked beneath the radiator again. Yep, the squirrel was definitely gone. And there was no point in asking Cosmo or Wanda to whip up a device that would track him down. Even if they weren't suffering migraines, tracking other magical beings was against Da Rules under some sort of code of privacy, unless he had specific permission from Jorgen or someone, and there was "probable cause" to suspect the stalker fairy in question was doing something illegal and not just being weird. Hey, maybe he just liked dusty old radiators.

So Timmy returned to the Dimmsdale side of the dimensional seam. Keeping one eye pointed towards the door which led to the Lindbergh hallway which led to the bathrooms, he took up the cube that Goddard had stopped guarding when he'd charged off (Kind of silly of Neutron to wire his robot to chase prey animals, he thought). "It isn't damaged, is it?" Wanda fretted, straining for a look from his arm.

"I'unno. It seems fine." He tossed it in the air. As she and Cosmo returned to their plastic party cup forms, Timmy pressed one of its faces against his thankfully non-bulgy and well-adjusting ear. Anti-Fairies were chattering inside, but even when he listened closely, he couldn't quite pin down exactly what they were saying. Only clashing claws, angry screeches, and…

Sometimes, vaguely, a few seemingly-heartbroken sobs.

He pulled the box away. It went down fast on the refreshment table. A clatter. Still no sign of Cindy. But on the far side of the seam, Neutron had just come back into the gym(s). He turned a full circle, puzzled by something he apparently sensed in the air, and then Sheen and Carl arrived to drag him away towards Goddard and the broken refreshment table. An older woman with a sharp nose who carried the authority of a teacher or principal stood nearby and tapped her foot. Timmy cracked a smile. It didn't last as long as he'd wanted, somehow.

"Hey," he said casually as another Graystar song came on, "keeping those bad-bats in here isn't going to cause any major imbalance in the universe, is it? Anti-Fairies don't like, actually contribute to society, do they?"

No response. It was possible his godparents hadn't heard him. Cosmo had just thrown up the contents of his own cup-body into the lemonade pitcher. Timmy sighed and made a signal for Wanda to clear the pitcher up with her wand and replace it with fresh stuff from the cooler. Then he dropped his head on the table beside the hypercube.

"Well, I'm bored again. Where's Cindy? Any chance you guys could _poof_ her out of the bathroom and back to the dance floor? With her clothes on?" he added in a rush.

"Ooh, ooh! I know this one!" Cosmo hopped twice. "Wanda, let me answer it! Timmy, Timmy, Timmy. The bathroom's the most private room in the building. We'd have to knock and be invited in before we could use magic in there. Someone could be in the middle of something important, duh. Like collecting their nose hairs to make the lines on a map for the Bermuda Triangle."

"Cosmo! Nobody does that. That's revolting."

The air warmed with the tingle of fresh Fairy magic. "Aw, then that means I've been saving all this fly paper and gorilla glue since August for nothing."

The resulting silence meant that Wanda had probably just pulled a face. Timmy continued to stare at the small blue and silver box. His fingernail bounced against its side. Tap. Tap. Tap.

"So," he said, finally straightening up. "Even though last I heard Jorgen wasn't so sure about it, Jimmy really wants to take the whole hypercube box back to his lab when the dance is over. That's cool of him, I guess. Means they won't be our problem anymore, nuh-uh."

Both cups stopped their bickering and turned to blink up at their godkid. Then some random bulgyverser swept the Cosmo cup away despite his quiet squirming, which left Wanda to give him that skeptical and yet somehow sympathetic look on her own.

"Timmy… Do you want us to _poof_ you home? Oh, I'm worried that all this Fairy magic is going to make you sick if you stay here any more than we have to."

"I dunno, Wanda… I think I need to wait here a little longer."

"Aw, I'm sure Cindy will be back for you. You've just got to show a little patience."

Timmy took a breath. His knuckles shook. "I've been thinking, Wanda. I feel kind of responsible for the Anti-Fairies. I don't want them to escape from this box on _Neutron's_ watch. He'd be useless getting them back without me."

Wanda scooted herself a few inches nearer to his elbow. "You sound like you're having second thoughts about the whole thing, sport."

Timmy shrugged listlessly. He pushed the cube away. After Cosmo had straightened his cup body of dents and _poof_ ed himself out of the trash can, "Yeah, dunno, don't really care. The Anti-Fairies are bad news, and they deserve everything that's coming to them. Who cares if Neutrash's got knives and lasers on all his shelves and he knows about the butterfly net weakness? Everything'll be fine, right?"

"Riiiight, because 'fine' is the most honest word in the English language."

After nudging Cosmo with her metaphorical shoulder, Wanda turned her eyes on Timmy again. "Oh, I don't really like the idea either, sport. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of hoping Jorgen keeps the Anti-Fairies in our dimension."

"But why? They just hurt people and cause chaos. Right? Everybody hates them."

Cosmo hopped behind Timmy's idle wrist to avoid the attention of a pretty, black-haired Retroville girl who had come to get herself a drink. "Hey Timmy, you know what else is hated by everybody? Fiery burning acid! But then like, stomach acid helps you dissolve your food. Speaking of which, ah, I think I may need to use another lemonade cooler pretty soon!"

"Cosmo, no," hissed Timmy, but gave up when the green plastic cup flitted away with a twirl of his wand.

Wanda nudged his fingers. "I want to see the Anti-Fairies locked up in that hypercube forever, sport, but there's that whole moral debate on whether or not that's fair to them."

"Because they're still people too," Timmy said, hollow-voiced. As Wanda winced at her migraine, he shifted the cube from his right hand to his left. "You don't think Jorgen will really send them away to live in Retroville with Neutron… Do you?"

Pause. "He might. Jimmy _was_ pestering him for quite awhile, and Jorgen doesn't always think before he acts. But, he's Keeper of Da Rules, and it's his decision to make in the end." She saw his face and added, "I'm sure nothing catastrophically bad will come out of it, Timmy. Things will work out. Life always goes on for the rest of us. Hey, the Anti-Fairies can't die, so like how Jimmy was telling Jorgen, they'd be the perfect things for him to experiment with. And he's the only one who knows how the hypercube actually works. He'll keep them contained."

"Pfft." Timmy wiped his sticky mouth on the back of his wrist. "Hey, Jimmy's cool, I guess, but I give it a month before they get loose and cause trouble. Cindy and I were talking about crazy stuff he's done with aliens, love potions, super yummy candy, and robotic pants." He scratched at his arm- even his magic-saturated self was beginning to itch, and it didn't help that Cosmo brought a new hot wave of the stuff when he _poof_ ed back into place just beside his wife on the table. "And, well, you guys had enough trouble breathing there, without much of an energy field thing, so…"

Wanda's glance was half-pitying. "Anti-Fairies don't need to breathe, sport. We do it for them."

"Still…" The small boy fingered three different corners of the hypercube as a new slow song came through the speakers around the magically-stitched-together gyms. "I dunno. I'm not ready to leave right now. Not just yet."

"Ooh… Okay, Timmy. But if you begin to feel lightheaded, we're taking you home where you can sleep it off."

"Hey, check it out." Cosmo perked up at once. "Fudgehead came back with his puppy. Maybe he brought brownies. Oh, especially mint brownies. Ice cream and brownies are good together."

Timmy did not turn around. But he did look up. "Wanda… I do feel a little weird."

She nodded. "I'd guess it's the overexposure to Jimmy's dimension."

"Actually-"

"Hold me to your face, sweetie. Do you need your temperature taken?"

He lifted her under the pretense that he was dunking her contents in his hair. "The people in his universe don't know how to deal with Anti-Fairies, though," he said in a lower voice. "One day they're going to get out. The bad guys always get out in the movies. The countdown is always stopped right before zero, the lost treasure is always found, the rule will always be broken, and people always go into the forbidden zone. Y'know. Obvious stuff."

"Ooh, ohh! And if there's a kangaroo, it always kicks somebody, and someone else always rides around in his pouch."

"'Her'," Wanda corrected. After she'd reported that as far as her less-sensitive fairy lips could tell, his forehead felt an average temperature, Timmy piped up again. "The Anti-Fairies are going to get out one day, maybe on purpose and maybe on accident. And then the Retroville people will get hurt. Their whole planet might be thrown in danger. At least in our dimension, we have Jorgen to guard them. We have Fairies who know they exist, and other godkids who've probably dealt with them too and who might understand how to fight them. Like Hadley. She said once Anti-Cosmo's dinner party friends bother her all the time."

Wanda paused. "What exactly are you saying, sport?"

Timmy rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know. Something stupid and irresponsible, I guess."

"Uh, Timmy Turner," Jimmy said, coming cautiously up behind him. Timmy straightened and, living up to his last name, turned around. Behind his back, his fingers tightened on the Wanda cup. He tried not to feel too small and passive with the guy being so much taller than him… Although granted, most of that face was forehead and hair, and Sheen still had him beat by a long shot.

"Hi, Jimmy. Cindy hasn't come back from the bathroom, in case you were wondering. And I haven't gotten my chance to dance with her, so it's still my turn."

Jimmy stopped scratching his arms and reached down to rub Goddard's ears instead. The dog wasn't looking bad, considering the speed he'd been moving at the last time Timmy had looked at him. "Can I get my hypercube back?"

Timmy hesitated. That made Jimmy press his brows together, extending his hand further.

"Fine," the ten-year-old muttered at last. He dropped the cube in Jimmy's palm, but didn't take his fingers from the top as he looked into his eyes. "But don't. Lose it. I don't want the, uh, Anti-Fairy virus getting out and infecting my computer programs again."

"Look, I know computers." Now Jimmy's gaze flashed defiantly, like he'd been personally offended. "I know how stuff like this works. My hypercube locked onto their particles. They're trapped in there until I let them out."

"I got out without your help," Timmy said back stubbornly.

"Hey, you're the one who said the virus couldn't escape a butterfly net firewall."

"Okay, but you don't know how this stuff works in my universe!" Timmy pulled the box closer to him, but let go when Jimmy yanked it back and held it defensively against his chest, partway under one arm. "They're smart, okay? They adapt and evolve. They've caused a lot of trouble before, and they could get out of your hypercube too."

Even though the music played on and people around them continued to sing and clap and stomp their feet, for a split second there, time and place stood still.

"You think you're smarter than me," Jimmy said in a flabbergasted tone. "You actually think you're smarter than me. Oh. Oh!" He clapped a hand to his forehead. "This is richer than that Eustace Strych kid! And I thought it was a joke. The average kid that no one understands honestly and truly believes himself to be more neurologically supplied than the certified boy genius."

Timmy clenched his fists, shoulders rising. His neck grew warmer, but _he would not let anger control him_. He had sworn a long time ago not to use the 'w' word when he was upset. Fighting down the irritation, he swallowed and said, "Look, I'm not trying to be a jerk, and I didn't mean to hurt your pride. I'm just worried, okay? I've dealt with these guys a lot. I'm telling you, they're not like a normal computer virus. They're clever, and- and- You're rolling your eyes at me! Don't make that face- you did!"

"You don't have to act this way, Timmy Turner. I've made some mistakes before, but I've run all the calculations. I'm no old dog learning new tricks. I have everything all under control."

"Whatever." Timmy turned his face away, still drumming his fingers against his thighs. The sentence would be so easy on his tongue… _I wish Jimmy and his friends were back in their own universe, and I wish they would stay there forever…_

Shaking his head, Jimmy patted the hypercube. "It's _fine_. Nothing is going to break these guys out on Jimmy Neutron's watch."

Goddard barked twice in agreement before promptly dumping a small heap of lug nuts, bolts, and washers (or something along those lines) on the floor. Jimmy groaned towards the ceiling. "Goddard, you were programmed to be house-trained…"

That was about the time that Cindy came back. While Jimmy was down, Timmy took advantage of the opportunity to claim his dance. Cindy was taller than him, and so he wasn't very good at twirling her under his arm, but he gave it his best shot. Her smile strained.

 _One day,_ he promised himself silently, _I'll be tall and have cool muscles, and all the girls will want to dance with me._

It was a pleasant dance, but Timmy had been watching the way she scratched at her neck and arms, and after two more songs with Jimmy and two with him, he muttered a wish to Cosmo and Wanda, and the music flickered off, and people groaned, and his long-awaited dance was, quietly, over.

"Thanks for coming to the dance with me, Cindy," he said as he picked her night-sky jacket off a stack of chairs. He toyed with the idea of wishing himself to Retroville after them. Cindy would like that. Not one but two boys walking her home for the night…

Jimmy leaned against the wall nearby, his infinite storage cube in hand. From the way he bounced it, you would never guess that it contained almost a hundred thousand evil spirits, all bundled up in one giant butterfly net. His body language was casual, but his eyes followed Timmy's every movement, even as Sheen and Carl bumped playfully into his shoulders, and he half-turned to respond to one of their jokes.

"And you're sure I can't just wish for the cube?" he muttered under his breath as Cindy called out and waved Libby over.

Wanda, still a rubber bracelet with eyes and lips, made her best attempt at shaking her head. "Sorry, sport. We're not allowed to use our magic to teleport Anti-Fairies, and, well… there are about a hundred thousand wrapped up in that thing."

"Yeah, I get it." Timmy scuffed his shoe against the gym floor. When Cindy's hand strayed close to his, he grabbed it and gave it a soft tug to refocus her attention on him. "Hey, at least let me walk you outside. That's the polite thing to do."

She giggled in that way of hers. "Timmy, that's so sweet of you."

"Uh, I can get us home from in here," Jimmy interrupted, fumbling in his pockets for whatever teleportation device he'd brought with him.

"It's the polite thing for a gentleman to do," Timmy repeated, and pulled Cindy after him for the door. Every step hurt. Not because she occasionally stepped on the back of his shoe, and not because Jimmy came scrambling after him, and not because of Goddard's yapping or the crowds of unfamiliar bodies shoving through the halls.

He'd had his dance. He'd danced with a girl! A smart and pretty girl! So why did it bother him, the way her eyes kept darting to the face that wasn't his, biting her lip in a failed attempt to choke back a laugh at a joke he hadn't said?

No chance. No chance.

And so… it shouldn't hurt so much… that he "accidentally" let go of her hand at the wrong time and knocked Cindy down the front steps of the school.

Jimmy's reaction was instantaneous. He raced to catch up with her. Timmy stuck out his foot and tripped the guy. He tumbled a surprising amount considering that his head got in the way. It must have overbalanced him. The hypercube went soaring in a direction it probably shouldn't have and bounced into the bushes lining the school. As Libby and Carl cried out and scrambled after their fallen friends, Timmy raised his wrist to his lips and whispered one more wish. A second hypercube appeared in front of the bushes. Only then did he give Sheen a nudge and hurry down the stairs himself.

"Cindy?" He reached for her hand- Libby already had her sitting up, and she was holding her head and moaning an exaggerated amount. "Cindy, gosh, I'm so sorry- Are you hurt? I wish you weren't!"

"Oh," groaned Cindy, lashes fluttering, "I think I may have… twisted my ankle."

"I'll carry you," Jimmy said at once, pushing his way forward.

"Uh, you?" Libby raised a finger and gave it half a shake. "I've seen you try to lift your suitcase out a' the back of your dad's trunk."

"My suitcase was full of bunsen burners and test tubes and chunks of minerals," he shot back. His hands went beneath Cindy, his tongue between his teeth, and he fought to lift her up.

"Not today," Libby said with a sideways glance as Sheen started to open his mouth.

"Well." Here, Jimmy looked at Timmy firmly. "We'll be heading back to Retroville."

"Guess you will. And…" Timmy took the hypercube that Carl had picked up and handed it off to Cindy. "Thanks for all your help, Jimmy Neutron. I was wrong. You're way smarter than me, and I know the Anti-Fairies will be safe with you. You're pretty cool."

His eyes softened. Evidently, the chink in his armor was shameless flattery. "Uh, thanks, Timmy Turner. You're not so bad either. We could hang out again sometime."

"In a few weeks, maybe."

"I'll look into it."

Cindy, still cradled in Jimmy's (shaking) arms, reached out and took hold of Timmy's shoulder. He glanced down at it, too startled to really react, and she planted a soft kiss on his cheek.

"I had a good time tonight, Timmy. I hope I can see you again someday."

"Uh- uh, yeah," he stammered back. "I'll make sure of it."

"Yeah," said Jimmy. "I'll be there too." His fingers tightened. Recognizing that it was finally time to back off, Timmy stepped back and waved good-bye. Behind the backs of the last few stragglers leaving the front of the school for the parking lot around the north side, Jimmy pressed a button on a yellow device held mostly by his neck, and the five Retrovillers disappeared. Did the other bulgyversers go with them? Timmy couldn't be sure, but he figured that if they didn't, Jorgen would clean up that mess when he came to it.

For now, he turned around and began to search the bushes. Cosmo and Wanda _poof_ ed into colorful butterflies beside his ear.

"Sport, what are you up to now?"

Timmy grimaced as he located the original hypercube at last. "Well, I'm either about to make the worst decision of my life, or do what some guys might call 'the right thing'. And if things go wrong, I'm blaming that second happening on my short attention span taking over."

"O-okay, just don't-"

"I wish we were in Anti-Fairy World."

Obediently, and probably reluctantly, both Cosmo and Wanda lifted their wands. There was a glimmer.

Then Timmy's insides backflipped. He shot into the air, particles dissolving, and rushed through the sky from Dimmsdale to Greece. The entire process took about nine seconds, and when Timmy through blurry eyes could recognize the incoming ground, he felt himself steadying out. His feet hit first, forming instantly out of electric pulses. Then his ankles, socks, shoes, legs, and the rest of him.

Experienced with magical teleportation, he didn't even stumble. Instead, he blinked up at the tall, iron gate in front of him. The sky was a cliché shade of red beyond it. Lightning flashed- the first time he'd ever seen weather in the cloudlands, except for the time Cosmo and Wanda had taken him to an area where the water leaked down from a river in the layer of clouds above. He blinked, then reached out and gave one of the bars on the enormous gate a rattle. It clanged, but didn't open. Locked. One of the four tall guards, a redhead dressed in the pale blue of the Keepers with the brim of a square cap pulled down over his eyes, turned to him with a warning squeaky grunt.

"We're… on the wrong side."

"Well, uh…" Wanda said slowly, "We can't go into Anti-Fairy World unless we've been invited, sport, or if Jorgen or someone else important is with us."

Timmy hardly heard her. A knot formed in the exact middle of his throat. "And where are the Anti-Fairies?"

"Timmy, Timmy, Timmy," chided Cosmo in his usual way. "Our magic doesn't work on them. We can't interfere, remember?"

The boy rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand, trying to ignore the guards. "Stupid… Okay, then I wish we were back at my school again."

They went back. This time, two teleportations too quickly did leave him with a throbbing head, but Timmy pushed through it and took the undisturbed hypercube from the ground. Now what?

Timmy held the box near his mouth. "Hey! Anti-Fairies in there. I want to speak with Anti-Cosmo."

Voices argued. Timmy rattled the box until they mostly shut up. "Get me Anti-Cosmo," he said again, and after a moment a familiar, frustrated, somewhat high-pitched British accent answered, "I'm here, Timothy. What do you want me to say? 'Pip pip and tally-ho'?"

"Um… Hey, so, how are you?"

A pause.

"Well, this is insulting."

"Anti-Cosmo, don't be like that. I want to say that I'm going to let you out and-"

" _What?_ "

There was no telling how many people screamed it. Wanda and Cosmo, certainly, and a fair number of Antis trapped in the box. Timmy held firm, never taking his gaze from the lid.

"Well. Let's just say, Timothy, that for now, you have acquired my full attention."

Timmy shut his eyes. "How many are you?"

"81,637," came the swift response, like a threat.

81,637. There were like 86,909 Fairies alive. So many were missing. But all the escaped ones had been captured. So many had never come.

"Timmy," Wanda protested, "don't do this. Wait for Jorgen and-"

"And let him take the box back to Jimmy? Wanda, _no_. The Anti-Fairies belong _here_. They're like us. Don't you see?" He lifted his eyes, biting his lower lip with his large front teeth. "Jorgen's not going to treat them fairly. He… he won't. J-just let me do this, okay? You've told me about Anti-Fairy World. But when Cosmo had his bad fagiggly gland, I saw the Anti-Fairies locked up in the Fairy World prison. They have to go… back home. There are still families there, and kids." Timmy shook his head, hard. "There are still kids. They're waiting, Wanda. They miss their parents. They're alone, a-and miserable, and…"

Wordlessly, both of his fairies placed a hand on one of his shoulders. Timmy shook as he drew in his next breath.

"Anti-Cosmo. My name is Timmy Turner, and I am going to let you out."

There were a lot of muffled noises- cheers, jeers, confusion. Anti-Cosmo hushed all of them, or at least their voices dipped low enough that Timmy couldn't pick them up through the box.

"Anti-Cosmo," he said again, more firmly this time. "You will take your Anti-Fairies, and you will _poof_ back to Anti-Fairy World. Because I am Timmy Turner, and I know how to fight you. I have the power of my fairy godparents at my side" - he checked quickly to be sure no one was around to hear him - "and I have another power too. I am human. This box can't hurt me. I have, uh, endurance power stuff. Anyway. I will chase you, and hunt you, and I will not give up until you're all back behind the Anti-Fairy World gate. This is my offer. Go now in peace, and I can get you home where you have your own comfy beds and all your stuff. Or stay to fight, and I'll call the Fairy legal system on your fluffy blue butts."

There was no response. Timmy and Wanda exchanged a glance. Both his godparents had their wands raised.

"Anti-Cosmo. Did you hear me?"

"Yes," came the irritable voice. "Oh for smoke's sake, we'll do it. Release us from this dratted butterfly net and we'll be off, just as you say."

"All of you?"

"Quite, all of us."

"You will have five seconds. Don't waste my time, okay? Uh, Wanda, Cosmo, if it looks like I'm about to be hurt, I want you to teleport me to a safe place like my house just in time."

Admittedly, 'a safe place' was a rather loose term, but the word 'like' amended that. There were certain tricks to the whole godparents game. You couldn't wish for invincibility, but you could ask for tougher skin or the ability to avoid most rough situations altogether. Immortality was forbidden, but wishing you could live to see a time when the world was free of pollution was not. Timmy looked back on that one fondly, even if Jorgen had caught on within a few days and ordered him at wandpoint to unwish it. Using the word 'like' in his statement allowed his godparents the option of changing their minds if they thought that maybe his house wasn't safe enough to hide in. Not a word of power you would want to let slip to a genie, but with loving fairy godparents, it worked pretty well.

"Timmy," Cosmo whimpered, but he was shushed. Timmy moved his thumb to a catch on the hypercube's right side. And then he pressed it.

Instantly, he was forced to drop the box as a cyclone of Anti-Fairies came whirling out, wings blurred and claws extended and… carrying Christmas presents? Timmy threw his arms up to shield his face, and when he lowered them again, he found himself nose to nose with Anti-Cosmo, arms crossed, floating about a foot and a half above the trim grass. This brought his narrow eyes nearly level with Timmy's own. He sniffed, hard.

"You're a fool, Timothy. This was your own choice. I owe you no thanks, no favors, no p _rrr_ omises whatsoever. If you wanted a two-way deal, you ought to have chased after the Pixies. In fact" - he shot the box a meaningful look - "I would suggest you still do."

Timmy set his jaw. With Cosmo's and Wanda's wands both ready for action behind him, and the hypercube he'd hastily snatched up now back in his hands, he had no need to be afraid. He had fought aliens. He has wrestled monsters. He had suffered through Trixie's rejections and Tootie's obsessiveness. He had lost everything in court and gained it back again. He had survived Vicky. Anti-Cosmo was like the shortest anti-fairy to ever exist (Napoleon complex much?) and Timmy refused to be intimidated. It would be a lot like being scared by a blue chihuahua- its yaps might startle you for a second, and it might be clever enough to jump on something taller and then jump into your lap and go for your face, but if you were prepared to defend yourself, there wasn't all that much it could do.

"Every Anti-Fairy," he repeated. "In a moment, Cosmo and Wanda are going to _poof_ me back to the Divide gate. I will count every Anti-Fairy. I'll stay all night if I have to- my parents won't care. And now that you're not in the box, I can bring it with me. Believe me, I know how to use this. I could do it right now, and you'd be trapped again. You being here should probably have tripped like all the Fairy World alarms. Jorgen will be on his way. This is your only chance."

As his followers whirled and giggled above and behind him, Anti-Cosmo remained unimpressed. His right hand now rested on his wand's handle, in the sheath at his left hip. "And why should we want to fly straight from one t _rrr_ ap and into another? Anti-Fairy World is no picnic either. Have your precious Fairies convinced you that we _like_ our drab and barren world?"

"Well, if you don't go, there's nothing stopping me from wishing Jorgen here right now." Timmy leaned forward on his tiptoes, amused when Anti-Cosmo didn't shrink back, but pushed their foreheads together until they met. His fur despite its thickness was icy cold, like he'd been dunked in water and left standing in a walk-in freezer for hours on end. He smelled like doorknobs. "I hear he's in a really, _really_ bad mood after you locked him up, and after accidentally getting his DNA fused with Professor Calamitus. Or, you know." He tilted the storage cube, always being sure to keep it out of the Anti-Fairy's reach, and ready to throw it if Anti-Cosmo really did go for his wand and shoot. "I can always hit the 'On' button again."

The anti-fairy leaned back. His eyes shifted between the little box and his followers. They did this for an entire twenty-second period. His shoulders twitched. At last, he removed his monocle and massaged the bridge of his nose. "You admittedly bring up a convincing argument, Timothy. Oh, very well. We'll play like the Fairies today and grant this wish of yours. No tricks. But this isn't over." He drew his wand and swished it hard. Light glinted on its polished star as he shouted, "Anti-Fairies, to me! Tally ho!"

They moved at once, creating a funnel overhead with Anti-Cosmo at its core. The High Count's lips peeled back from his fangs in a delighted cackle. There were tens of thousands of them there, swarming over his head. _They could annihilate me,_ Timmy realized then, taking two steps backward. _They could flipping annihilate me._

He kept his thumb resting near the 'On' switch, and said switch in plain sight as Anti-Cosmo and the others, in great bursts like popping fireworks in fours and fives, vanished from sight.

"After them," Timmy said immediately, and he was back in Greece. Mount Olympus, precisely, or at least something nearby. Timmy really didn't dare to look around and check, knowing he had to keep his guard up. Wanda had told him once that this was the weakest point in the Barrier, or it was meant to be. The sentries still should have been here. But, Timmy realized as he sprinted towards the iron gate, tripping twice in the snow and defending himself from giggling Anti-Fairies who wanted to pull his ears and yank his hair, Jorgen must have called them off when he detected the mass presence of Anti-Fairies in Dimmsdale.

"I wish I had a device for counting things," he blurted, since it was all he could think of in his high-alert state. With a _poof_ of warmth, a green band with a brightly-glowing screen and a single button appeared on his wrist. Timmy positioned himself by the gate and searched the crowd. Well played, Turner.

" _Hey!"_ he hollered. The speed of leathery wings zipping about blew his hair into his face. He pushed up his bangs, fighting to stay focused, fighting not to regret. Another anti-fairy bopped him on the head, knocking off his hat. Cosmo picked it up for him, clinging to Timmy's shoulder. The boy shouted again, and watched himself be ignored.

But the gate ground open. A hundred tons of iron squealed. The first anti-fairy, who bore the look of a distraught mother, shot right through it. Timmy clicked his watch and said aloud, "One".

He was at twenty-eight before Anti-Cosmo materialized in front of him again. This time his wand was in his fist, but he kept its transmitting tip angled downward. The green in his eyes flashed with the next several counts.

"Here we are, Timothy."

"And it's my - thirty-three - job to make sure you - thirty-four, thirty-five - all get in here. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight."

"Forty-six, forty-seven."

"Don't. You're evil. Forty, forty-one."

Anti-Wanda had arrived with her husband. She patted his hat in the same way she might dribble a basketball. "That was real stupid of ya ta let us go," she told him gently, "but it sure were nice."

Timmy forced himself to smile, still clicking rapidly at his counter. "Thanks, Anti-Wanda."

She flapped over to snag a rough hug from her stiff counterpart before, with one last smile and twirl of her wand, she zipped after Anti-Cosmo. He'd moved over to wait for her by the gate. He held out his hand at her approach. She took it, and together they followed the rush of the anti-fairies inside.

Timmy continued counting.

His mouth hurt from speaking. His eyes blurred over. He may have mis-pressed. Undoubtedly, undeniably, some rebellious Anti-Fairy up there slipped away in the chaos. But Timmy, stubborn Timmy, counted all he could. He counted even as they tore his clothes, and even as Cosmo and Wanda fired warning blasts to keep his tormentors off. He counted even as Wanda _poof_ ed him up glass after glass of water for his dry mouth. He counted even as the hours passed and he slid down the side of the gate, head nodding and eyelids fluttering.

80,822. Close enough. The heavy gates rattled shut.

"Should we _poof_ the real box back to Jimmy?" Wanda murmured, taking Timmy by the arm and hauling him upright.

"Heh…" Fighting to focus his gaze, Timmy tossed the hypercube from his left hand to his right. "Actually, I think I'll keep this. It could come in handy. He can have the fake one."

Wanda said nothing, but the buzzing of her long wings did start to slow. She crossed her arms.

"Fine," he yawned. "I wish Jimmy could get his stupid toy back."

It disappeared with an audible _poof_. Timmy lurched sideways, having been fighting to stay awake by sheer determination alone and too weak now to fight the backlash. Cosmo caught him and pushed gentle fingers through his hair.

"Good night, our sweet prince," he murmured as their godson slipped into sleep. He rested his chin on Timmy's crumpled hat. "Let's bring you home."


	27. (25) My Life, Your Death

_Summary:_ Timmy is making new friends; Imaginary Gary does his best to be accepting like a good best bud, until Timmy won't wake up.

 _Characters:_ Imaginary Gary, Timmy, Chester, Timmy's Dad, Timmy's Mom

 _Rating:_ K

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Sentry" / "Respect Your Elders"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **25\. My Life, Your Death** (Pre-series)

 _Year of Fire; Winter of the Fading Candles_

* * *

Looking back on it, it was kinda funky how he always smiled for Dad's video camera when he was just going to be cut from the final project anyway. When he was younger, he thought being removed from the family photo album was out of spite- Okay, so Dad didn't like him, no biggie, right, I mean, it's cool. He still got to play in the snow either way. He could make some pretty impressive snowballs for a five-year old.

Actually, looking back on it, a lot of things he did during that time of his life were funky. Heck, their entire family was funky. As the months passed and the photos that didn't include him were piling up in the garage, Mom didn't look at him the way she used to. She grew a new face. A worried face. A frantic face. She stopped setting out a plate for him at dinner, a bowl at breakfast.

He met Dr. Roper. Well, David, anyway. They played a few games at first, the cards spread across the soft powder-blue carpet, until one time they visited his office and the games stayed in their boxes on the highest shelf, and from then on they started gathering dust. They read cool poems aloud. _Your hand, your name, so glad, just fine._ More and more, they sat together on the couch, and took their turns complaining. He got interrupted a lot.

David was the one who told Mom to stop offering him the bowls and plates. It was to teach him independence, make him pull his weight, help him learn for himself. Sure. Whatever. He told himself it would stop hurting, and then it did, when he stopped caring. If Mom didn't want to be a part of his life, he certainly wasn't going to be a part of hers. They stopped speaking altogether. And after her, it was Dad. He didn't need them. All he needed was Timmy.

Timmy liked and respected him. They were best friends- something like brothers, even. After all, they took their baths together, they ate together, and they talked and laughed and got along like a treehouse on fire. Foster brothers, maybe, or cousins; they were close enough that the details of the thing didn't really matter. Gary carried a very special status that no one else did. A status better than a brother. An imaginary friend.

The word 'imaginary' wasn't entirely clear to Gary, but he knew that imaginary friends had special privileges. Although they might get hungry sometimes (if their real-life friends said so), they couldn't starve. They didn't usually have to go home to their parents (Timmy's parents were all Gary needed). They got all the coolest toys that could be thought up, as fast as possible. Sometimes they got cool powers, like shapeshifting or making copies of themselves, although Gary didn't have anything like those. He could just teleport himself and other people around him by holding onto their shoulder and willing himself away. But mostly he only did it if Timmy told him to. Timmy was the only one who knew good places to go.

He was pretty much guaranteed not to die from old age or some obscure disease. He was a jack of all trades by nature. If Timmy said so, he could eat an endless supply of ice cream and candy. And calories didn't count! Oh, and also, imaginary friends could never be hurt for long- nothing really bothered them. Physical or mental.

Gary reflected on that last one as their new playmate crunched with them down the street through the thin layer of snow to their house. Although Gary's hair was the image someone would see if they opened the dictionary to 'cool', the blond kid's hair was pretty nifty too, with that way it parted and fell to one side of his face, all short on the left and long on the right. It was just… different. Gary didn't believe in popular trends and stuff, so different was cool. And he had a nice smile, with his teeth so close together that not even one gap showed between them. Well, Gary liked his buck teeth well enough, and Timmy did too.

They'd met him at the park, on the swings. Timmy had brought his backpack. He kept his coloring books in it, and crayons. Timmy liked the green one. Gary liked red.

But Timmy had put his backpack down in the frost-coated grass by the cement flat and basketball hoop where Francis and Elmer liked to play. He forgot. Even Gary had been so excited to be at the park that he'd forgotten it was there too. It was his biggest regret.

So as they swung, Timmy started to worry. Gary could always sense when he was worrying. When that happened, he started to flicker around the edges. He thought about jumping off the swing to fetch the bag himself, but Timmy didn't tell him to. And he couldn't pick up the real bag anyway- just a semi-transparent, semi-rainbow one like a ghost. As Timmy grew sad and yelled to Dad's camera that he wanted help getting off the swing, Chester McBadbat had shown up pulling the big blue backpack across the snow behind him. That had made Timmy happy. And Gary liked it when Timmy was happy, so Chester, in his mind, was pretty cool. Chester would be pretty cool forever.

"Do you live far away?" Timmy asked Chester when they turned the corner. A deep puddle lay in a big dip where the sidewalk became the street. Gary skirted the edges, but it didn't keep him from getting splashed when the other two boys plowed straight through it. They didn't notice.

"S'okay," Gary laughed it off, flapping at the collar of his shiny jacket. "All the cool kids have to look a little world-weary to be cool, I mean, am I right, or am I right?"

"I live over there," Chester said, turning his finger close to the setting sun. "Across the train tracks, in the trailer park. I live at number 19."

"Right," Timmy said. "Nineteen is a good number."

Dad (Well, Gary usually called him Mr. Turner now) tailed them, of course, running his camera and sometimes saying cheerful things about what was going on. Gary hopped out of his way. When Mr. Turner came closer, Timmy turned his head.

"Can you take me to Chester's house tomorrow so I can play?"

Mr. Turner chuckled. "And this is the day Timmy asked if he could play with his new friend Chester tomorrow."

"… So, yes?"

They'd walked on. Gary hurried after them, still shaking droplets from the long sleeve of his slick jacket. "Hey, hey Tim-Tim. Are we still up for catching snails by the creek tomorrow? I just thought, y'know, I'm making sure because the creek is all the way on the other side of town by the cemetery and the volcano, but whatever."

"Yeah, Gary," Timmy called over his shoulder. "Of course, duh."

Chester turned around, his blue eyes wide. He looked up and down and sideways. "Who's Gary?"

A look of shock crossed Timmy's face. "Oh no! I forgot to introduce you!" So saying, he took Gary's elbow and pulled him closer. "Chester, Gary. Gary, Chester. See, Gary's my imaginary friend."

"Nice 'do, haystack hair," Gary said, pointing a finger gun with his free hand.

"Okay." Chester cocked his head, sending his hair fluttering against his freckled cheeks. "Well, hi there, Gary. Thanks for being friends with my new pal Timmy. I'll bet you take good care of him. I think you're cool, so I hope we can play together too."

"He likes you," Timmy said happily, so Gary of course put on his patient smile and said, "You're not so bad yourself, hamdog."

"Hey, and I have an imaginary friend of my own. Uh, somewhere around here." Chester looked around, then pointed up into a nearby tree on the other side of a white picket fence. "That's Tracy the opossum." (It was always opossums with this guy, wasn't it?) "Say hi, Tracy."

Over the last eight months, Gary had gotten good at recognizing imaginary friends floating about Dimmsdale. It wasn't like it was hard- all of them carried a rainbow glow around their edges, and all of them knew how to use it. When night fell and their real-life friends slept, it wasn't uncommon to check out the window and see teams of four or five hurling multi-colored globs at one another, scrambling reality (Well, _imaginality_ ) when they burst on impact, and messing around with each other's designs. Temporarily, of course.

Gary watched often, but rarely joined them. Timmy might wake up from nightmares at any time. Mr. Turner's camera was always left on the side table near his bed and running, but while it did, Mr. Turner slept. He and Mrs. T. didn't always come running if their son screamed in the night. It was Gary's job to be there on the windowsill to offer him comfort at any time. Besides, how could he keep up his image as the coolest being in Imaginal Dimmsdale if he lost a Glob Ball game, I mean, come on. Unless it was with Timmy, Gary never played any game he wasn't 90% confident he could win, or at least strut off the field with his head held high.

The opossum in the tree was pink in color, with a long purple tail and purple ears. White patches blotted her chest. She blinked down at Gary in warning. It dawned on him a second after he raised his hand to say hello.

"Oh!" Gary stuffed his hands in his jacket, sucking at his gums. "This is _your_ friend, Trace. Oh, so, we're cool, right? No hard feelings about me scaring you off the roof a couple weeks ago?"

Trace stood and raced up into the snowy branches of the elm. Although the brown real-world leaves stayed in place, the Imaginal ones rustled. Two of them dropped, spiraling downwards. Bright colors flickered at their edges. Next thing Gary knew, she had jumped to the tree further down the sidewalk. Timmy, Chester, and Mr. Turner had started walking again without waiting for him, heading for the place where the road curved, next to the orange _Please Watch For Children_ sign that Mr. Dinkleberg had set out last month.

Cobbler Street was up there around the bend. Timmy pointed up the slight rise to the second-highest house- the white one with the two layers of red roof, the shingles shiny with melting slush. "I live there."

Chester's eyes popped. He stopped walking, and Tracy, who had just made a leap to his shoulder, missed him by a few inches and plowed into a snowdrift. Gary stifled a snort when her head popped up again. "You live _here?_ " the blond kid asked.

"Yeah. I have a good front yard, see. My backyard is okay too, except it would be cooler if there was water back there. Like a pool, or a river."

"You might drown in a pool," Mr. Turner said cheerfully, focusing the camera on Timmy's flushed cheeks. "You need swimming lessons first, son."

"Oh, okay. Dad, Dad can you sign me and Chester up for swimming lessons together?"

"Put my name on that list too, Mr. T."

Chester smiled hugely. "Would you really, Timmy's Dad? That would be so cool! You'll have to talk to my dad first. Hey, maybe he can drive me up here, and we can play at your house."

Gary took a step forward, casually bumping Chester's elbow with a hand that passed straight through it. "Count me in, Tim-Tim. That's not a problem, is it, Haystack? Where Pink Hat goes, I always follow."

Chester kept smiling. Apparently it wasn't. He really was a pretty cool kid. Tracy, who had wound herself around his legs, flattened her ears and shot Gary a warning hiss, like she thought he might try to steal her kid when he already had a friend like Timmy.

Timmy shook his head. "But I'm always at my house. I want to play at yours. Can you show me, please, where you find all those opposites?"

"Opossums?"

"Okay, those will work too."

Chester smiled yet again while Gary shot a snide sideways look towards the camera. "That sounds neat. I'll ask my dad. He can call you. And I'll make sure you meet my other really cool friend, A.J. He's super smart. Maybe even a genius! So I'll try to see you tomorrow, Timmy."

Gary watched Timmy's shoulders lift as Chester skipped away down the sidewalk, Tracy trotting at his heels. He let his breath out through his happy, buck-toothed smile. Then he turned and rang the doorbell.

"And this is our son forgetting that his dad has the key to our house tucked safely in his pocket."

"Oops," Timmy said sheepishly.

Technically, Gary could have teleported to the other side of the door. But Timmy didn't really like being left alone that way, so he just waited instead. They went inside when the door was open. Timmy dropped his backpack on the couch with a soft _shh-rattle_ noise as his crayons and coloring books bounced around. Gary jumped onto the kitchen table, an arm on his propped knee and the other foot swinging over the side.

"It's getting late, Tim. We oughta start a Go-Fish game before your parents try to send us to bed. They think we're cute when we're playing, y'know."

But Timmy's mom swept her son off his feet with an "Off to night-night, sweetie" and carted him upstairs anyway. It took Gary a startled several seconds to react. It made sense, of course- they'd already had dinner, and the sun had just about set beneath the hill. Once it sunk in that his night was fading on him, he sprang off and, with a muttered word, raced up the tall steps after them. Timmy was in the middle of a yawn, already rubbing his eyes. When they came into his room, Gary checked the clock next to the video camera that Mr. Turner was carefully plugging into place. It wasn't even seven yet.

"We'll Fish tomorrow," Gary decided. He reached for a discarded sock puppet from the floor. When he lifted his hand, an Imaginal duplicate appeared clenched in his fist, glinting rainbow at its borders. "Hey Tim-Tim, what say I put on a show for you?"

"Mm… Y'okay." But his attention was mostly on his mother and his bedtime routine. As Gary lingered on the opposite side of the room, trying to decide how exactly he wanted to set up his puppet stage, Timmy changed into his red pajamas, silly goldfish slippers, and oversized pink sleeping cap. Then he used the bathroom and brushed his teeth. His two front ones especially- most people didn't focus on the others. Abandoning the puppet, Gary came close to watch.

Timmy rubbed one of the buttons on his pajama shirt. "Mommy, can you please read me a nice story tonight?"

"Why sure, honey." She lay his toothbrush back on the counter. "I'll read you the one about the man by the sea who went out and caught a fish that could grant his every wish in return for being set free."

"Mrs. T.," Gary called after them as they moved back into Timmy's bedroom, "you forgot to brush my teeth again. Uh. Not cool. Timbo, could you tell your mom-"

Gone.

Gary wrapped his arms around his stomach and nodded. He hopped up from the lid of the toilet where he had sat himself. So, this was how it was going to be. Yet again, he was the last one to arrive in Timmy's room. He lingered crossly in the doorway there as Timmy's mom tucked him in.

"I made a new friend today, Mommy," said Timmy through his yawn.

"Oh, did you?" Mrs. Turner sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the sheets. "Tell me all about him. Was it a him or a her?"

"He's a boy," Timmy laughed. "Being friends with a girl would be weird. His name's Chester. He lives in a trailer park with his dad. They go- they go hunting for like big animals and fish and things all the time. A-and tomorrow! Oh, tomorrow, he- he's going to take me to fly kites and dig for worms with him, and we're going to climb this big strong tree and jump into a huge pile of leaves, and look for, um, opposidioms. And he's going to invite his friend A.J. over to play too!"

Gary's heart lifted. Okay, maybe today hadn't been the best he'd ever had, but he couldn't deny that Chester _had_ seemed like a pretty fun kid to play with. Any child who could catch a rat with his dirty and yet totally snazzy bare hands had to be. And Gary missed climbing trees. Mr. Turner had forbidden it after that time he and Timmy had fallen over the fence and into Mr. Dinkleberg's backyard. At least the guy had been nice and let them make juice out of the apples they'd managed to pick before their crash.

"Well, that sounds like fun. I'm so glad that you're making real friends." Mrs. Turner pushed her son's hair back from his face and kissed his forehead. "Good night, Timmy."

Gary waited, but in all the excitement, Timmy forgot to ask her to give him a kiss too. It wasn't the first time it had happened. Ah, well. He'd never missed two nights in a row. Tomorrow would be better. Tomorrows typically were.

Anyway, Timmy had even forgotten about his fishing story, and the sock puppet show. So yeah, he was excited. And Gary wasn't going to complain when his best friend was happy.

So no biggie then. He took up his usual place guarding the window. As an imaginary friend he really had no need for sleep, except for those times he woke up screaming about nightmares (or so Timmy insisted). As Timmy drifted off, Gary did his utmost not to disturb him. He just watched, being quiet.

Once Timmy was under, Gary put himself to work. He leaned his forehead against the cold windowsill, running all his memories through his head. He was Gary. He was five years old. He was a cool kid. He didn't have a last or a middle name. Timmy Turner was his best friend. That was who he was. He couldn't forget that. Gary didn't really know exactly what would happen if he forgot himself, but rumors spread on the lips of nervous imaginary friends in the town, and they all agreed that no matter what, if you forgot yourself, it would not be a good thing.

Plus, he had a broken pinky to regenerate, and he hadn't wanted to do it in front of Timmy. It might hurt his feelings, or scare him. With a flick of his hand and a swirl of rainbow magic, it was back to normal. Imagination powers had their perks.

His reflection didn't show in the glass, but Gary had been brought into existence as an expert at managing his looks. His shiny black pompadour was his greatest pride. He reached into his jacket pocket and began flicking his comb through his hair. Little bit by little bit.

And really, there wasn't much else to do but that. Gary would've liked to read some of the books on Timmy's shelf, but they were physical things and he was not. Although he could pick up the books, they wouldn't open without the word of a real-life kid. Sometimes, fellow imaginaries insisted, you could pry an Imaginal book open. But the pages inside would be blank. Anyway, Gary could read very little. Mostly he just liked the pictures.

Other options? He could hold his shades, his jacket, and his comb only because Timmy had thought them up. Usually, Timmy did think up a stack of picture books for Gary before bed. Maybe a game, or a set of colored pencils. Just not tonight. He'd been too exhausted, too excited. So tonight, for one winter night in 1997, Gary drew a rubber ball from his pocket to bounce against the wall and passed his time with murmured songs and stargazing.

A few hours in, his attention slipped, and Gary bonked his head against the window. The rubber ball bounced away into the remains of the sock puppet stage. He blinked and straightened up. His eyes had been closed for too long. The world beyond the window had long moved on without him. A world of gentle cold.

The snow out there was thicker now than he'd ever seen it before. The breeze spun swirls of flakes across the black night. A light across the street in the castle-like home of the Chamberlains, who had just put their place up for sale, switched white lawns into warm yellow fields, all smooth and rounded at their tops. Footprints filled in with snow. Gary rubbed at the smudges on the window pane, which didn't seem to have much effect - probably because he was inside - before he pressed his nose against the frozen glass.

"Cool…"

Gray clouds slipped across a gray sky. Icicles clung to the undersides of everything. The whole universe was embraced in white.

Gary watched it for minutes more - hours more? - before he groped behind him in search of a blanket heap. "Hey, Tim-Tim. Wake up. Wake up, you gotta see this."

"Mm, what is it, Gary?" Timmy was supposed to mutter. Except that he didn't. He didn't even move.

Um.

He wasn't waking up… Why wasn't he waking up…?

Worrying wasn't in Gary's nature. He sat on his knees on the windowsill, his toes resting against the bed, his hands on his thighs. He softly breathed.

"Timmy," he called, keeping his voice low. There was no answer. Gary crawled across the covers and placed two hands on Timmy's shoulder. He shook it. Hard. "Mornin', Captain Canines. Emperor Incisors. Major Molars. Wake up…"

Nothing. Timmy didn't even roll over. Gary reached out and cupped his hand around his friend's mouth.

He felt nothing. No expelled breath at all. No cold at the window. And no warmth inside.

… Now things were getting concerning. Spitting a word he wouldn't have dared to if Timmy were awake to hear it, Gary threw himself off the bed. His feet twisted beneath him. One hand plowed through the camera on the nightstand. It passed through, meeting no resistance. He didn't even hit an Imaginal version of the camera, which wasn't right, but Gary really didn't have time to pay attention to that. He scrambled up. Arms pumping, he raced down the hall, tripping once, and slammed against the door that led to Timmy's parents' room.

"Mrs. T.! Mr. T.!" His fists came up, pounding like sheets of hail on aluminum, except in total silence. "He- he won't wake up! Timmy won't wake up! I can't hear him breathing. He doesn't have a pulsing thing. Turners! Can you- can you hear me? Hey, we've had our differences, but we're cool now. This is serious. I need your help! Timmy _needs_ you!"

Briefly he stopped to press his ear to the door. No sounds came from the other side. Gary withdrew, clenching his hair in two hands as he fought to keep himself together. Flecks of his skin and jacket were peeling away, vaporizing in mid-air. A second later, he willed himself inside their room. Running across the floor- reached the bed- climbing- blankets- their hands, their names, not glad, not fine- no breath, no breath, no breath…

"No. No, no… Please. Mom, please get up. Mommy? I know you don't like me, and you try to pretend I don't exist, but it's really important that you get up. Dad? Father? Hello?" Gary crawled over the blankets and reached for Mr. Turner's shoulder. "Howzit, chief. You need to get to the doctor right now, okay big boy? Mom- Mom and Timmy might be- they might already have- Hello? Hey, hey! Th-this isn't cool. Mr. T.? … Pops?"

Gary withdrew his hands. He sat there on his knees in the lumpy blankets between them, turning his head back and forth between the two adults. Were they hibernating? Timmy had read him a story about bears sleeping all through the winter, and waking up in spring. Maybe they'd just eaten too much for dinner. Yeah, they'd had like a whole turkey, because Mr. Turner didn't have the patience to wait until Christmas in a week. Maybe they'd wake up soon.

He shouldn't be here. Gary knew that. He was Timmy's imaginary friend first, and always would be.

But imaginary friends weren't supposed to be left behind when their real-life friends died. Wasn't something supposed to happen to him? Wasn't he supposed to be sucked away, locked up in a kind of freaky prison? They said that happened to imaginary friends whose kids decided they weren't going to play with them anymore. They either stopped existing, or dwelt forever in limbo, drowning in old memories. It was a known and common fate- imaginary friends normally didn't last for long. Gary had only existed for thirteen and a half months, and he'd seen a lot of good, kindly people come and go.

The Turners needed help. That much was obvious. Gary teleported himself out to the front yard in a burst of rainbow sparkles and swept his eyes up and down Cobbler Street. Somewhere off to his right, down the hill and maybe around the corner where the road branched off into a cul-de-sac, he could hear cheers and shouts. A ball of electric energy slammed into a tree and left a splash of multicolored goo that oozed down the bark. Invisible to real-worlders, of course, but Gary knew better than to touch it. The tree had promptly turned into a palm. Coconuts rained like snowflakes before bouncing off into the drifts of snow.

He took off running, pushing his shades closer to his eyes. "Hey buckarinos," he shouted. "My kiddo needs serious work done on him! Can one of you tell me what to do to help a guy and his parents who won't wake up?"

The real world may be sleeping, but imaginary friends of all shapes and colors and species were out and about down at the bottom of the hill. One of the usual Glob Ball games was going on, with teams of scales and feathers versus those with fur or skin. Rainbows arched back and forth over both sides of the street. Gary narrowly dove beneath one, jarring his teeth when he crashed against the icy road and sliding forward on his belly.

He jumped up, spinning in a frantic circle. There, behind the yellow bush. A girl with pink pigtails made the universal rainbow sign for 'imagination' and summoned double swirls of magic in her pale palms. "Maryann! Hey, it's you. Look, it's G here. Hey, is it cool with you if I call a time-out for a sec, li'l dogs? Imaginary Gary's got a request to make."

Maryann stuck her tongue between her teeth. She reared back her hand, looking directly at him. Gary flinched away.

"H-hey! Don't be like that, I'm not part of the game." He took a small step back. Then a second one, keeping his arm slightly raised in front of him. "Remember last week? We played human-based versus animal-based in Glob, and I took that blow to my leg so you could get away? I limped on a crocodile foot for hours. Remember how you kissed my scraped knee, and we held hands? I leant you my unbreakable comb for your hair since your kid never gave you one? _Yipe!_ " Gary threw his hands up to defend his face, knowing he was about to lose at least one of them. Of course he could regenerate it with his magic, but that could take ages. There were worse fates than merely losing a limb, after all. Depending on who threw the glob, there was no telling what might happen- In a blink, Gary could have anything from a hawk's leg for an arm to a clarinet to a tentacle.

The blast shot straight through him. It didn't even ricochet off his rib cage. It missed his heart.

But it shouldn't have missed his heart.

Gary stumbled back instinctively, grabbing for the exact center of his chest, where Timmy had placed the very heart-shaped little heart that pumped his blood full of light and rainbows. He patted up and down his shirt. Had he been hit? Had his form shifted at all? He hadn't fallen down. Maryann was right there beside the bush- How could she _miss_?

When Gary raised his head again, he found himself panting. O-okay. So, they were all busy playing their game. Too busy for even a cool kid like him. That was fine. After fighting to snag the attention of an otter and a mermaid and getting blanked both times, Gary had to call it quits. He had left the Turners alone for long enough. Not that he could fix anything.

There was nothing more he could do but sit vigil. Wiping at his nose with a fist, Gary teleported himself into Timmy's bedroom again. His best friend hadn't moved. He just lay there with his head on his pillow, a small smile frozen on his lips. The white pom pom on his sleeping cap dangled in front of his face.

"Tim-Tim…" Gary's throat closed over. He shook. Even when he stepped forward, he still shook, with every _stupid broken step_. "Timmy, please… I-I tried. Oh, Pink Hat. I don't say this enough, but… I can't do this. I can't lose you, okay? That's not cool one lick."

When no answer came, Gary heaved himself up onto Timmy's bed. Hopeless, he turned three circles before flopping down. And so he stayed there, sprawled, with one foot dangling from the edge. He sniffed once with a shudder, trying to be stronger than his five-year-old body allowed.

His foot rested against the frosty window. But he wasn't cold. He held his hand in front of Timmy's mouth. But he wasn't warm.

Morning awoke, painting streaks of bright light through the window and across Timmy's back. Gary watched them dully, moving his hand in the hopes of creating a shadow that would never come.

The blankets shifted beneath him.

Gary bolted upright as they surged like sand dunes. "Mom!" Timmy hollered. He threw off his covers and hit the floor running. Clothes flew from his drawers. Like lightning, he stripped himself down and covered himself up again. Still fitting his hat over the enormous cowlick in the back of his hair, Timmy ran through his room and slammed the door behind him. "Mom, can you please drive me to Chester's place? I want to go right now!"

Gary teleported himself to the bottom of the stairs as Timmy careened down the steps. "That was so not cool, Tim-Tim! I thought you were dead!"

Timmy, cheeks flushed, didn't even glance at him- just swung himself around the banister and kept going. One gobbled breakfast and a slurp of grape juice later, he was on the move again. Like he hadn't even heard. At the door, Mr. Turner - awake and alive too! - was just pulling on his coat. One of his other faithful video cameras still clung to his hand by its worn strap.

Gary barred the door that led outside from the kitchen. His breath huffed in his chest. Saliva bubbled in his mouth. He took off his shades and blinked. "Tim-Tim, Pink Hat, I serious gotta talk to you-"

And Timmy ran straight through him. As if he wasn't there.

That was a cold feeling, of oil and migrating birds. Gary didn't stumble this time, like he had during Glob Ball. Of course not. He hadn't been hit. But he did blink in bewilderment, twice.

Then he turned and took off flying yet again into the falling snow, just as Mr. T. pulled the house door shut. Gary jumped off the two front steps, but his feet didn't sink into the thick powder below. He slipped hard. Then he slipped again as he tried to get his feet back. He was… weightless, standing there - almost floating - with the snow below him. Untouched. Both in the real world, and in imaginality.

Mr. Turner, who actually could crunch through the snow, reached his car and began to fiddle with the locks. Gary shouted and fumbled after him. Fighting to walk in this sliding way of his, never sinking into the drifts, never leaving footprints. That was hard, but he made it. And he was almost fast enough. Timmy climbed into the back of the old station wagon and pulled the door shut behind him. It clicked.

"Timmy!" Shaking off flakes that weren't there, Gary grabbed the door handle and yanked with all his might. Didn't open; must be locked already. " _Hello?_ Best friend for all of forever in need of some assistance here!"

The car rumbled to life. Caught off guard, Gary dropped the handle.

"T-Timmy?"

Timmy propped his chin in one palm. Gary began to bang on the side of the car with a fist that made no noise and sometimes slipped straight through the physical form as though he were punching milk. His hand flickered around the edges each time. "Timmy? What's your dealio, Pink Hat?"

The Turners' car rumbled backwards down the driveway and turned to its left. Imaginary friends, if there were any left at this time, scattered to the sidelines as it plowed down Cobbler Street. Spitting, gasping, Gary took after them. He sure had been doing a lot of that over the last two days, following.

" _TIMMY!"_

It- they- he- just… just disappeared around the corner. Gary chased them for a few streets, until they left the neighborhood altogether and broke into a bigger road, heading for, more likely than not, Chester and Tracy's trailer park. Then he slowed his pace, because sweating wasn't cool, and leaned over with hands on knees to nurse a stitch and catch his breath.

He couldn't see his knees anymore.

He couldn't even see his hands.

Gary raised his face, still sucking at frozen air he couldn't actually feel. "He was never dead," he realized then. His vision blurred away from falling snowflakes into unfriendly walls of sickly pale brown. When he dropped limply to his knees, barely bracing himself by his hands, his shoulders shaking, the floor was cardboard. The same chirpy yellow as the shoe box beneath Timmy's bed, wherein lay the very first drawing Timmy had ever made of him, and where he had been born.

"… I am."


	28. (52) Not All the Same

_Summary:_ Anti-Wanda comforts a distressed Anti-Cosmo after the bake-off, and in return requests he act more accepting of his son(s).

 _Characters:_ Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Wanda, assorted anti-fairies, Hiccup, Foop

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "It's On Now!" / "Lucky"

 _Prerequisites:_ None; this piece occurs shortly after my 'fics _Identity Theft_ and "Yellow Flower Number 9".

* * *

 **52\. Not All the Same** ("Balance of Flour")

 _Year of Soil; Autumn of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

Alas, poor Julius! I know the bitter tang of defeat well; a fellow of infinite ingenuity I was, and at times of the most excellent fortitude. But lacking within me still was an internal fire department trained to quench the flames of wrath, so all too often such fiery tongues spring up to consume me whole, and leave me with sharp stinging eyes and a throat blazing sore and raw.

I've found my evening tonight one to tempt swears from even my proud tongue. From tight-fitting costumes and flailing squids to a kidnapping and the taste of Mother Nature's fury electric through my lightweight bones- Nuada Airgetlám, what a bothersome week this has been. If I were the type, I'd clock out on my roost with a soda bottle in hand, and drink my woes away upside-down. Oh, it's been so bloody irksome tonight. The constant crick in my right plagiopatagium throbs in time with the boiling of my blood. When I float beneath the portcullis of my castle, I remove my faintly-cracked monocle and trace my claws through a light navy swirl of thick bangs and sweaty, static hair.

Consider: To fall so short so near the finish marker, the hare to the Fairies' tortoise and still without a subsequent deadly blaze to sweep the forests and fall nipping upon their nonexistent tails. Their rewards reaped without a hint of irony. No drawbacks, no fallbacks, no injuries sustained. And wherever does that leave us? Stung and soiled, groveling for our scrappy meals in the ashy mud- bruised and animalistic. Ah, but such is the Anti-Fairy lot in life.

The estate quiets down with the wearing on of evening; I push through the main entrance, and down some distant hall hear a wooden door shut with a rough yet tired slam. For a time I linger in the foyer, tracing my eyes up the staircase on the left. All its barred windows are set in stone at the proper intervals. With a final squeeze of my hand and a kiss to my cheek, Venus flits up the steps to drag Foop from the library and tuck him into his coffin for the night.

I rather suspect she's going the wrong way; on my right side, two halls away and three doors along, I can hear the television cycling through commercials in the den. The volume is much higher than necessary for a castle regularly lived in by twenty-seven sharp-eared Anti-Fairies, so I know what night it is. The noise carries. To his room especially, seeing as he sleeps not far above it. That snot-nosed spawn of mine loathes the flickering screen and the pops the speakers make, so on a warm night such as this one, he's undoubtedly snuck out to the gardens. He won't start school for… awhile yet, but he _has_ discovered a recent fascination for edible plants. Perhaps the excitement of the annual bake-off has brought him into that spirit, hmm? And Anti-Elliot dotes on him so, which would explain where and how he came across the key to my private greenhouse.

Glory, Foop. How old is he, again? It shames me how I can't remember precisely… Forty-four. He's forty-four, yes. Yes, isn't he? Or not?

Wait a moment; hold the phone. Surely not, or he would have shed his exoskeleton by now. Where does that put him, then? At under a year? Hm. Oh, he's old enough, anyway, that perhaps in a week or three, we'll make a father-son project out of it, and I'll gift him a small greenhouse of his own.

After Venus disappears from my sense of hearing as well as sight, I replace my monocle and take the path to the right of the stairs. So many damaged cinderstone statues line this curving hall, and out of habit I hit each one with my echolocation as I pass. Their carefully-chiseled features light my mind in sharp detail. _Flash_. The seven sons of Tarrow the Luck-Twister (Artist's rendition, and I can't help but give Sunnie a respectful bob of my head as I pass). _Flash._ Jay Rhoswen, _Faedivus_ cherub he may be with the tails of his lab coat (the first lab coat) caught billowing behind his feathered wings forever. He holds tablets of stone, a flustered expression across his face and one hand up behind his ear. Of course, Anti-Shylinda kneels at his feet. Naked, once, but after Foop was born, Venus and I made no small handful of choice adjustments to our castle's decor.

Generations of High Counts and Countesses blur together as I skim along. I skip over Anti-Bryndin hand in hand with Anti-Elina. Anti-Phillip (pieced mostly back together following one too many irritated afternoons of target practice) waits patiently at his father's right, out of his step-mother's spiteful gaze. The polished horns beneath his broken winged hat gleam brighter than the white-tinted shades which balance on his nose. Oddly dressed for an anti-swanee with his pressed shirt and tie, but when one flees the Blue Castle as a refugee and thrives under H.P.'s hand until in a moment sickeningly kind, High Countess Venus Anti-Wanda Anti-Fairywinkle summons him back to take his place as the Soil seat on her camarilla, it's understandable. I can almost hear the word 'elephant' springing from his tongue. On a second whim, I double back to kick him in the chest. His stone face doesn't flinch, even when I blow a raspberry at him and turn my tail. Good riddance to him, and a dash of spice upon his nonexistent grave.

At the winding hallway's end, facing me as guardians to the great hall on their left and the next corridor on their right, stand a cluster of three, captioned with Braille dents large enough to pick up on even from my distance as I sweep by: _The Anti-Fairywinkle Family, Year of the Red Dirt to Present._ A cubular child stands between his two parents, carved with a calmer face than the one he actually wore that day. Foop hated having to dress up in his smart vest and cravat, and oh how he squirmed when one hour turned into two and then more. In his defense, he was hardly half a day old. He's in for a nasty surprise when we take him back to have his figure updated after he leaves his puppy stage behind for good.

His mother's hand, though clawed, rests softly on his small right shoulder. Even as a statue, she carries herself in a manner gentle and airy. Free and compassionate. Understanding. Obviously a traveler, and the cloak and satchel she was chiseled with make that distinction obvious to those who don't know her quite as well as I do. The detail is incredible, down to the wrinkles pressed into her lips, her large jutting teeth politely straightened so she might appear more distinguished here than I know she looks to most. The swirl at the front of her hair and the one down her back were brought to life by a steady hand.

And of course, holding Foop's other shoulder is Anti-Cosmo. Unlike Venus, whose features are exaggerated somewhat in the direction of smoothness and infinite patience, little needed to be altered in his statue, except the cinderstone version of myself looks taller beside his wife than the real one. Everyone knows him by the blue morning coat with the unusual slight tails curling from the ends, because he makes a point to wear it beyond the castle door at all times (Exception being one night that Hap, Jorgen, and the Head Pixie had kidnapped me so I might spend a last night out on the town trapped in one of those ghastly parties that H.P. so enjoys before Foop would be born to tie me down with parental duties, but _that's_ a story for a coming day). His small hat with its upturned brim balances perfectly on his head. The look he wears is knowing and smug, and although the hair falls heavily over his face, it doesn't quite cover the famous monocle balanced on his right side. The artist did her best to let both eyes show so that the careful features of at least one might be touched with echolocation, but in actuality, his bangs are welcome to conceal the other one in their typical swirling way all they want. It won't see more than darkness either way.

A single chirping pulse and twitch of my ears is enough to relay all such details to me at once. I don't even pause beside that family of three, and instead pass on into the corridor. One branching hallway continues forward, but I take the sharp left and follow that path for a moment until I reach a propped-open door.

The television commercials end as I skim in. Cheering erupts from ten voices as the game tonight returns. Every owner of said voices is dressed in their nightwear, and several cradle bowls of popcorn or nuts in their laps. Some are crammed together on the couch, and others lie on their stomachs on the floor. Anti-Sylvester, Anti-Scarlett, and Anti-Kathy dangle from a well-worn ceiling rafter, groping for slices of cheese and pineapple pizza on an anti-gravity platter between them. When they point at the large screen on the wall and shout, scraps fall from their fangs onto Anti-Kyler's head, though the anti-brownie takes it in stride. As far as the two camarilla courts go, only Anti-Coleen and Anti-Julian aren't present in the room. It's Wednesday, so she's taking her turn to monitor the Divide gate, and I don't care in the least where _he's_ slipped off to. A dash of spice on him, too.

I interpret what's happening by sound more than by the picture. The Talauds are playing the Duskies and the Egyptian Fruits in saucerbee, and winning by a faint margin. Anti-Scott, the lone supporter of that last team, has been relocated to the far side of the overturned coffee table. The next round of tea-saucers is launched. Scrambled voices tumble over one another as the camera splits into four. With my arms folded, I take my place in front of the screen and watch my shadow play threateningly across Anti-Edmin's and Anti-Phillip's faces. That shuts them all up.

"I believe I've uncovered the reason why none of you came to support Anti-Wanda and I in the bake-off tonight," I say dryly.

Wings shift. Claws scratch behind necks. Eyes avert. Most of the the ten figures present attempt to peer around me as the game plays on, and I fight the urge to blast the top of the screen clean off.

In slow motion, still craning his neck from his place on the partially-eaten non-leather couch, Anti-Kanin points the remote control at the television and switches it off. No one protests except Anti-Tanner, behind his fangs, and Anti-Elliot knees his calf. Then Anti-Kanin turns his heavy-lidded gaze to me. "Aye, ye know they specifically picked this weekend, this time, to celebrate the anniversary a' the truce, cap'n. The game's on in our time zone. We's not exactly welcomed in Fairy World, are we? And the whole a' the contest's rigged for the Fairies anyway."

I clench my fists. "But this time I _had_ it. Don't you understand? Oh, we were _so close._ One bake-off. Just one! A single one! That's all we ever need - just one stupid bake-off - and the entire _u_ niverse shifts in our favor!"

"And I betcha think the Fairies will roll belly-up and hand it straight off to us too, huh, big boy?" Anti-Scott mutters.

I whip out my pumice wand and aim it at the place between his unibrow and that ridiculous bellhop cap he wears. He flinches, pressing his stomach against his pillow. "Anti-Scott," I snarl, "Anti-Wanda may be the only one with the power to _rrr_ eplace you as the Seat of Breath on her camarilla, but I remain High Count, and your superior, and you will treat me with _respect_. And that goes for all of you!" I look around, my temper flaring colder in my chest. "What might any of you have to say for yourselves? Come on, speak up."

Anti-Edmin rises to his feet, holding to his tall pointed hat with his right hand. "Boss, it's USC weekend. End of the outdoor season, and you know Anti-Fairies can't play regulation saucerbee indoors, so this is-"

"For smoke's sake, I don't ask all that much of you! But at the least could you support me and the rest of our people?" I jab my wand back into the hallway. "Anti-Wanda and I were solely alone! When I told you all your presence at the bake-off would be appreciated but not required, I wasn't expecting absolutely all of you to _rrr_ efuse!"

Visibly suppressing a sigh, Anti-Kanin shifts on the couch again. "We get that yer upset, skipper. Let us make it up to ye later. But fer now, our game's on, so if ye-"

"You represent the year of Love on my camarilla court," I snap at him. "You could at the very least act like it sometime."

"I'm sorry, fine," he mumbles. "Aye, we'll be there next year, cap'n."

"See that you are." Demonstrating incredible self-restraint, I flip my wand back to my left hand and shove it in its silver sheath. The _shiing!_ of it makes each one of them wince. After I leave the room, Anti-Kanin switches the television on again. At first, the only sounds come from the screen. Yet even when I turn into the next hall, I can hear the whoops and hollers starting up again. How different they were from I.

('Me'. H.P. would want me to say ' _me'._ However, I reject him.)

"Perhaps Foop had the right idea tonight, heading outside," I murmur. This was what came of selecting a camarilla comprised entirely of red-eyes. I still hold to my careful decision; with two courts of Anti-Fairies whose eyes would keep their default color thanks to the genetics of their counterparts, not sending Venus off to transmit the beloved iris virus STD and its resulting halo effect (or doing the deed myself) was well worth it in runs both long and short.

However, when it happened, I didn't discover my son out in the gardens. Rather, I run across him just outside the painted white archway that leads to the connected observatory, standing near the corner of the hall with his head to one side. His hearing isn't yet as developed as an adult's, but clearly he can pick up on the cheers of the camarilla carrying from here. "Good night, Father," he greets me pleasantly at my approach, placing his two small palms together before him.

"Hello, Foop," I reply. I saw the hands. It's more of a struggle to keep my voice steady than I typically like to admit.

The pup's square face twists in a despondent way. "A-actually Father, it's Hiccup."

I bop him sharply over one corner with my wand as I pass him by. The automatic torches flicker in their sconces. "Your given name is 'Foop', your legal name is 'Nebula', and when you have your coming of age ceremony once you turn 150,000, we will call you 'Anti-Poof'. 'Hiccup' is not among your registered names and does not exist."

"But I'm Hiccup!"

I turn back with a sharp twist, wand clenched in my left hand. He shrinks away. "Nebula Anti-Poof Anti-Fairywinkle. I am in a ravishingly rotten mood and I absolutely do not have either time or patience for this. Do you understand? I'm looking for your mother. I need your mother. Go to your room."

"… No. No, please, Father…"

"What?" My fangs barely separate as I speak. I take a flap closer to him, and he reaches for the curve of the arch behind him. My wand shifts to my right hand, the way it always does when I slip into my most serious self. The transmitting tip glows pale blue like an ember. "Did. You. Say?"

Foop draws in a shuddering gulp of air he doesn't need. "I- I… said 'No'. Y-you have to call me by my name. Please."

" _Go to your room_ , boy, and stay there."

"But I get awfully nervous when I'm left enclosed in small spaces-"

" _Now_ , child." I blast a beam of blue into the stone floor between us, shattering the rocks and making him flinch. Singed chunks of grit fly up into his face. "And for Tarrow's sake, don't fall asleep on me. We will talk about this later and have this 'Hiccup' nonsense cleared up for good."

His violet eyes brim with despair. He holds his place, his fists shaking beside him. That wounds me internally, a slight amount. I won't hit him- I could never hit him. I smacked his corner with my wand, sure, but that's the most I could ever bring myself to do. Mentally he's already inherited the limp in my right wing, though vaguely in my fury I notice he appears to be flying straight for now. I tweak his wing with a yank as I swoop past him, too fed up to look at him a moment longer. I've always been the type to threaten more than I do, and to shy away in the face of that two-letter 'N' word and a stubborn jaw. It's my fault- I let him get away with too much, and I never punish him enough. The way you parent, the way you parent… With our pups expressing their personalities so immediately after birth, it's the Anti-Fairy way to believe in the effects of nature over nurture. Yet H.P. has toyed with psychology and child-rearing and sometimes he disagrees, and he's so smart and I'm far younger, and maybe he's right, and it's all my fault. Oh, pity me. I could have raised a pawn, and yet I ended up with a non team-playing little _rrr_ ebel instead.

I find Venus in the kitchen after another five minutes spent storming through the halls and gnashing my fangs. She's hovering above the island counter, piecing together a sandwich with her feet, and appears rather engrossed in her work. Still, she drops the bag of corn she was eating (To clarify, she ate the bag, not any of the corn) when she detects the bitterness seeping from beneath my bristling fur.

"Well, you jist look more ruffleder than a fruit bat on a unicorn's carcass. Didja talk ta the cammies durin' their saucer show? I thought Ah heard shoutin' down da stairs."

" _Ohh_ , Anti-Wanda." I push both hands through my hair, nearly lifting myself further from the ground in the process. "Another dratted summer has passed us by, and still yet again we come away from that wretched bake-off empty-handed."

"We had our wands an' our clothes though, yeah, so we wasn't quite all that with th'empty hands like the human kids."

I whirl on her, my bangs flying in front of my good eye. "No, allow me to amend myself! Not even empty-handed! Look at me! Look at _us_ , Anti-Wanda! I'm still dripping static and soot from that lightning bolt dear Mother Nature found it humorous to slam us with! Oh, cruel fate, to smack us lower when we are down and unarmed. Is that how she would have treated her p _rrr_ ecious Fairies? I ask you, _who obliterated Hy-Brasil?_ Who uprooted our flora and cursed our beloved world? Who tore the planets apart when we sought only to protect them?"

"Aw, you did your best t'day, hon-"

"My _best!_ " Piece by piece, I'm splintering as I speak. I bring up a hand to cover my small and fake pointed nose, squeezing shut my eyes. _My best!_ Of course I'd tried my best! Doesn't she get how that's exactly the problem? "Good smoke, woman! When is it that my _best_ is ever going to win us anything? Have you seen how bloody pathetic I am when it's meant to _rrr_ eally count?"

Venus tilts her head to the right with a rustle of thick fur. "Don't fergit we won us some gold-metal medals afore, in the Fairykind Games…"

" _You_ won those medals!" I scream, slamming both palms against the counter and leaning over. "Every _year_ you take gold in no less than th _rrr_ ee events, and I have to fight tooth and nail to even win myself the _chance_ at claiming silver! And you're the reason I even managed to infiltrate Jorgen's heavily-guarded bakery yesterday, and _you're_ the reason we managed to capture and tie up Timmy Turner at all!" I look up at her, my eyes only a tad blurrier than my running nose. Stretching further across the counter - hovering over it with my legs held behind me, really - and with wings beating rapidly and swirling with pink magic to keep me up, I take her cheeks in my hands and squish them inwards. "Ohh Anti-Wanda, you don't _understand_. You don't! You're so beautifully elastic, you could never know what it feels like to fight with your absolute all and still fall so short! Over and over in an endless loop of fate!"

"Anti-Cozzie," she murmurs, never breaking eye contact with her soft cloud-pink eyes.

"Oh, and the people love you, darling, for the way you travel among them without fear whilst I fritter at the castle over _u_ seless project after _useless_ bloody _project_. They love you for the way you treat every commoner as though they were a member of your camarilla, the way you listen to their ideas and relay them back to me. Gods, how do you _do it?_ From what blessed soil sprouts your infinite patience? They like you best, and of course they have a right to. You're incredible- they _ought_ to like you. Jimmy Neutronic Krisday, why don't I _think_ , Anti-Wanda? Why do I always, ridiculously, allow my impatient mania to take advantage of me when I'm too weak to fight it? I'm s-so stupid, why am I so stupid…"

She takes my wrists and, with the calm of a monocarp, slides them downward and wraps my jittery hands in hers. "Shh, Anti-Cozzie, you're shakin' so. Are ya still flailin' like you're on energy-high again? D'ya want me ta find you some meddy-sin?"

"No, no- For smoke's sake, don't be daft- there's no time for that. I have to _u_ se my energy, have to channel it, this manic bloody energy… Work harder, work faster… _I don't know how to cook, Anti-Wanda!_ " I use her wart-flecked knuckles to wipe at my eyes. "If I j-just knew how to bake brownies- If I just had gingertie caffeine like the Fairies do- If I could just barter more effectively with the anti-pixies- If I were only smarter- If I were taller, people would take me more seriously- If I were a tad stronger- Plumes and ashes, I couldn't even beat the _Head smoking Pixie_ in a footrace, sugarfur, and he's over seven hundred and forty thousand years old, a-and you won your race, and you win all your races because you're so tough and wonderful and amazing, and I c-can't even beat him, and good cinders, you're better than me at _everything._ Ohh, no one respects me… Smoke, did you hea _rrr_ what the camarillas had to say to me today? They'd listen to me if it were _you_ telling them off- they always listen to you. I d-don't know how you do it. And Foop always talks back, like he did when I was in the hall just now- Anti-Wanda, no one _respects_ me- They don't listen to me- They think I'm a joke- They hate me- Everyone hates me- Smoke, I hate myself…"

"Shh, shh, aw, nah, don't hurt yourself that way, Julius. Words hurt so much… Lots. And it's just silly ta hurt yourself, y'know? Where ya gonna live if ya hurt your body? And how's your body gonna feel if it's gotta carry a sad soul? Aw, that don't make sense, 'less ya got another body in ya're pocket thatcha can slip inta, like a spookster ghost fella! Here. Here, Anti-Cozzie… I respect ya." Her claws trace their way behind my back. "Guess what. Know what I know, honeyfangs? I love ya. Did ya know that? I love ya so much. You're so important to me. More'n the world. More'n all th' worlds. You're special. You're worth so much to not jist me, but e'eryone else too. I love ya, y'know. Y'know? Yeah, you know. I know it too."

"I shouldn't yell," I sigh into her shoulder. I've pricked my finger with my clenched fists. Fairy-Cosmo must be in a rather gay and chipper mood, because a bead of cheerful yellow blood glistens on my claw. I ought to be secreting a miserable shade of green, but my magic is borrowed from his core and it taints my colorful borrowed blood. What a cruel joke; I'm a cruel joke…

"S'okay. You talk so fast when you're mad, I don't really catch most of it anyway."

We're kneeling there on the counter, surrounded by torn slices of bread and bits of lettuce and tomatoes and three types of cheese. Not a trace of meat. Not because my beloved Anti-Wanda won't eat it, but because she knows I don't like it when she does, and that means _so much to me_ and just makes me begin to shake again. I wrap her more tightly, my ears drooping down my back, as I choke out, "Rhoswen, dear _Rrr_ hoswen, Venus. S-sometimes fools poke fun at you - even our own camarilla courts - and I loathe that. I need you, my choicest little lilac, my bright lily in the swamp. Smoke, I need you s _ooo_ much…"

She squeezes my wings in a soft way. "Aw, thankie, ripplewings. That's real nice ta hear. Yep, I think the secret ta love and happiness is two people thinkin' the other one is better'n 'emself. 'Cuz you always sit there tellin' me I'm so great, but really… Ah'm not crazy special, Anti-Cozzie. You knows this. We's been married fer nearmost fifty thousand years now, and ya know this. All Ah'm doin' is coverin' for ya where you need me. You're doin' all the hard work. You jist forget ta see it."

That helps. It doesn't cure, but it heals. I leave my chin resting on Venus's shoulder for a long time, just holding her and pretending that I'm okay, that she's fixed me, that it won't happen again, that I'm not shriveling up inside and always have been, and I j-just want to stop this downhill spiral… She turns her head as I'm kneeling there and catches me in the mouth with hers. My eyelids always flicker up for a moment before they fall shut when she does that. Even so, I wish my monocle hadn't fallen off during my sobbing episode, because I'd have liked to get a good look at her pretty face.

Or perhaps I don't need one. Having her beside me these last ten thousand years, infinitely prepared to drop whatever she's doing and rush to comfort me, that makes up for my poor vision. Her kiss is beautifully cold, like a snow-covered tree branch that dumps pleasant ice crystals down your back as you pass. Perhaps it doesn't matter that the camarilla didn't join us at the bake-off. My wife and High Countess was there to support me. Often that's enough.

One more thing that Venus has always been superior than me at is being so delightfully skilled with her kisses. I don't mind that one.

"Did I hear you was fightin' with Foop?" she murmurs as we ease apart.

My ears twitch in turn. "Ohh, he _rrr_ efuses to answer to his given name, though I simply cannot fathom why, unless it's the appearance of it in the tale of the three little fairies that irks him so. Translated literally in the ancient surviving Genie tongue, it means 'wolf which _rrr_ uns across the blue moon'. I find that it suits him well. And yet more and more nowadays he always wants to be called blasted 'Hiccup'."

"Huh." Venus's head goes sideways again, and her claws move from my shoulders down to the crooks of my wing joints. "Ah think that's Hiccup that goes and wants ta be called 'Hiccup', hon. Foop's none too likely ta answer ta that, h'yuk."

All I can do then is stare at her. We're still kneeling, still holding one another, but our moment is over and my pleasure is lightly fading with it. "Oh. Oh. So you believe him, then. You believe that rubbish about the two different personalities."

"Course Ah do. They's mah sons… Shoul'n't Ah believe 'em?"

"Sons." My temper is rising again, burning cold on the back of my neck, but I try to bite it back. Not in front of Venus, not in front of Venus… "I say, so we're referring to him in plural now."

"Ooh! That reminds me, Ah made oyster chowder fer dinner fer us! Ah was jist waitin' 'til you came in hungry."

I sigh. "What's this about oysters, then?"

"'Cuz ya said 'pearl', see."

"Back to Foop, dear." I close my eyes and bring the knuckles of her left hand up to my forehead. "It's the way he insists he isn't always in control of himself that I can't stand. Why, I have my manic episodes and my low ones too, but even with the honey-lock instinct ever d _rrr_ iving me to pair with you three months after our counterparts do, I would never say I lack _control_ of myself. It's always me. I simply can't believe him."

Venus withdraws her hands and sizes me up with a half-reproachful look. That hurts. For a moment her eyes, so often crossed or pointing opposite ways, are both able to focus on my face. "I'll get din out," she said. "The bowls and spoons too. But you gotta go talk to Foop. That's what I want."

"But-"

"That, Anti-Cosmo," she says, beginning to pack away her sandwich ingredients with her feet as I wilt on the counter on my knees, "is how ya can show me 'I love you' too."

Typical woman.

That's how I find myself, then, sitting on the floor just outside Foop's bedroom door, with one leg curled beneath me and the other stretched out. I lean my head back against the wood and merely listen. He's fighting in there- talking to himself again, as he does nearly every night. That was my job, Venus told me. If I wanted her dinner, if I liked her hugs, if I craved her kisses beyond the occasional moments of honey-locking, then I needed to do this.

"I hold ya when you cry," she reminded me when I complained. "Please jist talk ta your son. Jist listen ta his stories. Stop runnin' and hidin' from him. He's got a lot ta say."

So I would. I would make the attempt. For her.

On that first day, I confront him as promised. I scold him for his disobedience as much as I can manage to without losing my temper too far, and he sits there in his coffin of a bed holding his silly red and white bear toy in his lap and begs me to call him Hiccup, until I refuse too many times with my _"Now, Foop"_ s until he eventually gives up, and his disgruntled eyes wander, and he doesn't say anything more.

I spend each evening after that beyond his bedroom door, holding a notebook against my knees and jotting down notes. I write everything- what he says, and how he says it too. That was my idea. I don't bring that up with him- the babbling. Foop was ridiculous, Venus (though I treasured her) was wrong, and I was going to prove my point.

But as I listen for weeks on end, sometimes with my wife at my side but mostly on my own, I start to turn my head. I lean more intensely to the door, my tall pointed ear pressed flat against it.

Because I can't believe what I'm hearing.

That's not Foop in there. Not always. That's not my son.

"I want to help him," I explain to Venus the first time I begin to doubt myself (Well, not the first time I doubt myself, but I imagine you know what I mean).

Venus caresses my chin with her soft hand, shifting closer to me along our perch with soft steps so as not to wake the camarilla clinging upside-down in the roosting room around us. "Not 'him'," she says, so gentle and knowing. " _Them_."

"Hm." I lean an arm behind my neck, and I wonder about that. With a pregnancy, it would be easy to prepare for another anti-fairy pup tearing through the castle with a splashing bottle and whirring wings. But the splitting of one child into another… I'm not sure I'm strong enough to be a father of two. I _had_ collapsed into a furry blue puddle after finding out my wife hadn't baked me brownies, after all.

Their squabbles grow more bitter, their personalities more distant every passing day. A word begins to show up more and more frequently throughout my notebook, until I nearly exhaust my limited space and wonder if I ought to pry a fresh one from the messy stack on my desk. A six-letter word that begins with an 'H'.

"Anti-Wanda," I say one day, catching her hand in passing as I head to the den to begin my usual afternoon reading routine, "would you terribly mind pulling out all our nicest clothes for our appointment tonight?"

"Ah don't have a terrible mind, ya codfish," she retorts, feigning offense with both hands to her hips.

"Oh, but nightshade! Darling!" So I twirl her forward, wrapping my hands around her stomach. Since she's taller than me, her shoulder blocks my face. I hold her from behind nonetheless, my arms sliding beneath the knobs of her leathery wings. My claws join together at the front. "It would mean so much to me, dearest. We ought to look our best, and you know I do ever so want to get this done before you head out on your fortnight of travels again tomorrow morning."

She unfurls her wings and moves them backwards to hug me (a tad awkwardly) in return. "Ah'm sure there's lots ya wanna do 'fore I head out on my travels in the mornin'."

"Mm… I won't deny that." I kiss her hand before I go off, my book resting beneath one arm. I've only been sitting for five moments when a small square figure, not showing any sign of a limp in his wing, drifts through the room past me.

"Hello, Father," he mumbles, holding his hands loosely together in front of him.

I sigh carefully through my nose. After placing a marker in my book, I turn my head. "Hello, Hiccup."

It takes him a wingbeat. Even two. But then he spins around, both hands clapped to his cheeks. When he blushes faintly purple, his pink pilot freckles begin to show. "Mercy me! Y-you called me Hiccup. Father, you _talked_ to _me!_ "

"Of course I talked to you, you simpleminded buffoon." I roll my eyes. "You're my son, are you not? What sort of father would I be if I _rrr_ efused to acknowledge such a polite greeting in my own home?"

Hiccup floats there, stunned as though stupid. I fix him with a hard stare and, when he still doesn't move, flick my wrist. "Well? Get off with you, lad. Don't you know your mother's upstairs in your room waiting for you?"

"F-for… me?"

"Good smoke, were you not informed? We're having your statue made today! I won't stand for having any offspring of the Anti-Fairywinkle family without an accurate statue in the front hall! Tally ho now, Puck, and don't dawdle. Oh, bother it all, chap- You're going to make us late!"

* * *

 **A/N:** If any of you would like to see the drawings I did of the camarilla members alongside their canon selves and with the element each one represents on the Fairy zodiac, and information about who the camarilla are and what they actually do, you can visit my Tumblr blog (FountainPenguin) and type 'camarilla' into the search bar. It'll pop right up.

If you don't want to do that, just know that the camarilla courts are a sort of adviser council made up of the Anti-Fairies who sat around the castle dining table during "Fairly Odd Baby".


	29. (35) Name

_Summary:_ If two pixies sneak into Foop's private greenhouse to steal a rare citrus and no one is around, do magical alarms make a sound?

 _Characters:_ Jardine, Rosencrantz, Sanderson, Foop, assorted pixies

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Take a Break" / "The Other One"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

 _A/N:_ I need to apologize- I wrote this prompt specifically to help me study for my horticulture exams. Looks like today's dose of fanfiction will be super extra funducational.

* * *

 **35\. Name** (~500 years post-series)

 _Year of Leaves; Spring of the Invaded Garden_

* * *

Hirschi slammed his palm down on the intercom button. "H.P., Jardine filled the coffee mixer with potato bugs again!"

Jardine wrapped both hands around the shorter pixie's mouth and pulled him away despite the flailing of pale fumbling arms and whirring wings. "Boss- Boss, I think I'm justified, you know? It's 8:52 in the evening, and the holiday season is over. What could he possibly need the coffee maker for? Lick me all you want, you phototropistic little cretin- I dig in Earth mud for most of my days. _Ow!_ If you start a swarm at this hour, I swear-"

"It's decaf," snapped Hirschi. He wiped his mouth with the end of his crumpled tie. "I always have decaf when it gets late- You know I work the under-2,000-year babysitter shift Mondays, and Verona and Finley don't go to bed until some forsaken hour of the morning."

"Fair, but I did wait all day to use that coffee maker," Jardine argued. Hirschi wrenched his hand away from the intercom button and shoved him through the door of the break room. It sent him stumbling, hands falling one after the other after the other and again against the opposite wall before the door slammed. Still, he squared his shoulders squarer as he backed up and started to turn around. "I-I read a few months back that spreading their ground-up bodies over the leaves keeps off the living bugs-"

" _Oof!_ " Hot liquid splashed across his stomach. Millennia of training prevented Jardine from flinching at the touch, but he felt his left eye twitch behind his shades. His fingers, though still down by his sides, flicked at the wrists. A startled, stung pixie glanced up at him, one hand hovering over his now-crumpled paper cup. Several droplets of dark coffee dribbled from his collar. He took in the flustered, trying-not-to-be flustered figure in front of him, his mouth slightly parted as he tasted the imprint in the energy field. After he'd identified the offender, a crease crossed his upper lip.

"Juveniles."

"Sorry, Sanderson," Jardine whispered. He fought to maintain a calm expression, but inwardly, he was mortified. He looked up to Sanderson greatly, in a manner of speaking meant entirely in the metaphorical sense (no one over the age of 114,000 could actually look up at Sanderson the physical way). Not knowing what else to do with his hands, he floated over to the hallway corner, where a grayscale coleus (a Sprigganhame variety he'd spent millennia producing himself) was just leafing out, and began plucking off the terminal buds.

Sanderson put his head thirty-one degrees to his left side. "Did I hear a disagreement about insects in the coffee grinder?"

"I, er, was trying to perform my job to the best of my capabilities?"

"H.P. sent me down here to remind you that with this being the night Mother Nature and Father time dub the name of the new Leaves year, he's very busy at the moment and is not to be disturbed. It's already tomorrow in Luna's Landing, and he was hoping he wasn't too late to catch Anti-Cosmo or someone before roost. Such things lead to paperwork, and paperwork leads to busyness, and that means that if Longwood doesn't catch you first, I get to punish you if you pull anything like that again. You would be surprised how creative I can be with my punishments."

"I didn't do it," he mumbled, glancing back.

The older pixie remained expressionless. "Yes, I can see that. However, I like delivering punishment, and if you give me the chance, then I will. That coffee maker is on the fritz as it is. A week ago, Rosencrantz convinced himself it would be a brilliant idea to plug the thing into one of the outlets on the cubicle floor- forgetting, apparently, how much pure magical energy is coursing through the wires in there. Fried it to its last legs in a wingbeat. Dear dust, _Rosencrantz_ …" Sanderson shook his head. If he were one of the pixies who shared Jardine's apartment, he might have removed his shades to pinch his nose. Instead, he set his empty hand to his right hip. "Rose hasn't been waking up on time. Recently Hamilton, Newman, and Faust have taken to _ping_ ing his bed above the pool in the TFE building and dunking him. I have noticed he comes in here soaking, and he drips on all the electric cords. He's been warming himself up with coffee, and now his work is becoming less efficient and more jittery than ever."

"Oh. I… see." Jardine rubbed the largest button on his suit's jacket between his thumb and forefinger. "Um. Shouldn't you help him look into that? Rosebud, I mean. There has to be an alternative…"

"No longer my intern, no longer my problem." Sanderson raised his brows over the edge of his shades, the coffee cup concealing most of his mouth and nose. "Now, it's almost nine o'clock. I have retinue duties to perform for H.P. Don't cause any more trouble. Don't ring up the boss unless it's really urgent. And frankly, Rosencrantz can bite my buns."

Jardine wrinkled his nose, but stayed silent. Sanderson wasn't the type of pixie one argued with. So the younger one watched his coworker drop his cup lightly in the hallway's corner trash can and speed off towards the elevator without another word. Then he tapped his chin with a dirty nail.

"An alternative… I wonder…"

Still pondering absently, Jardine floated back and opened the door to the second-floor break room again. It slid without creaking. Hirschi hovered by the far wall, flipping through a stack of coffee filters as though they were the terms and conditions of a P.A.W.S. update.

"What?" he asked without looking up.

"Hirsch, did you say you're sleeping in Snowy, Rosencrantz's, Verona, Finley, and Southmark's apartment tonight?"

Hirschi spat an unground bean into one of the dirty filters and wrapped it tighter. "Yep. I'll tie them to their beds if I have to. My hope is that they're exhausted after yesterday- Did you hear Keefe walked in and found them surrounded by smuggled Halloween candy?"

"Eh, if they were willing to trick-or-treat with Hamilton, Newman, and Faust out and about, they're welcome to it, I say." Jardine continued floating, keeping his hands clasped behind his back. After a moment, when Hirschi had tossed the filters aside and instead taken up an electric cord with two knots in it, he said, "Let me make this 'potato bugs in the coffee grinder' incident up to you. I'll _chocolate shell_ out for a new one, too."

"Don't. And here I thought you just made plant puns."

"I make all the puns. Not one of my best, though. Listen, you can watch the others, but I'll take Rosebud all night- punch out his card and everything."

"Where's the loophole?"

"Erm. If I'm buying a new coffee grinder, I want the old one. And if you bring this up with the boss again and get me in trouble, then I'll be forced to tell him about that time you and Caudwell snuck off to meet Anti-Wanda at Jorgen's Pizza and Duck-Zooka Parlor Parlor without permission."

Hirschi scratched at his neck. "That was a legitimate business transaction, before we were so rudely interrupted- Did you see her dive over my head to get to the door when H.P. and Sands burst in? It just so happened that we also got pizza out of our trip. Pizza is low-key my life. I like to think that I'm the piece of H.P. that got a kick out of the refreshments at Princess Vyanda's bowling ball party all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. Okay, I'll allow it. Rosie's yours tonight and any other time you feel like being generous. But you'll probably want to get out there like, now. N., H., and F. were after him by the fountain."

"Aw, complete fertilizer." Not wasting even the time it took to draw his starpiece from his jacket pocket, Jardine _ping_ ed away. The world flashed. A second and a quarter later, he materialized above the central Inkblot City plaza, with Headquarters at his back and the Pixies Inc. welcome sign across the freckled, almost pixelated pink and purple clouds in front of him. Beyond it, the Bit Bridge arched downwards to the second plane of existence. Jardine had probably slid down and scaled that Bridge more times than any of his coworkers, even though he was the 81st of them and barely 215,000 years old. Transplanting daisies and other interesting flora from Earth was kind of his job.

Sure enough, even though it wasn't yet nine o'clock, Hamilton, Newman, and Faust were already making their rounds tonight. They made it their mission in life to chase their straggling brethren back inside after hours, and usually stayed out to keep guard for will o' the wisps and other intruders (unless Longwood told them otherwise, but for dust's sake, Longwood). The three muscular pixies were brilliant at the annual Olympics and indispensable during business talks to potentially dangerous foreign ambassadors, but an absolute nightmare for their fellows to deal with. Jardine still ached from the last three Halloweens.

And today, they had their sights set on one of the smallest pixies of all. Rosencrantz tore down Lavender Street, covering his head with a manila file folder. Loose papers and crumpled notes spilled in his wake like Jorgen and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs in the old fairy tales. Hamilton was close behind. Gaining fast, too. His two ham fists were clenched in front of him like a cup, obviously clutching something large and alive, and Jardine was able to guess what it was as he listened to Rosencrantz's pitiful howls.

"Stop! That's not relatively amusing in any form! I _hate_ bugs!"

"You are literally a third of a bug, you smoof-headed moron," Faust hollered after him, his heavy feet pounding like bricks of iron on the cloudstones. Newman, easily the fastest of the trio, swept Rosencrantz off his feet and flipped him backwards into the air. The scrawny pixie flailed his arms and beat his wings rapidly. That steadied him somewhat, until Hamilton jumped and made a motion as though to slam dunk the little guy to the ground.

Jardine simply dove forward and caught him before they could connect. His momentum was enough to bring him rolling up to a crouch in the road, holding the shivering Rosencrantz to his chest. Instantly, the three larger pixies jerked away and backed off with their enormous palms facing forward.

"We were just leaving, Jardine!"

"Yeah, no need to break out the poison ivy this time."

After setting Rosencrantz to the side to kneel and wipe at the snot leaking from his nose, Jardine slowly pushed himself to his feet. Newman and Faust cringed away. Amused but not surprised, the smaller pixie locked his fingers behind his back. His lip twitched in the right corner. "H.P. may have retired to his penthouse for the evening, but I have no shame in _ping_ ing him a report about the unsafe workplace behavior I just witnessed here. I'll have four hundred springing sprites out of the two of you. Not you, Hamilton. You'll do six hundred."

As Faust and Newman hastened to comply, jumping up and down and moving their arms and legs like scissored 'X's, Hamilton leered forward. The dark purple sky darkened slightly further. "You don't have either the authority or the strength t' boss me around, punk."

"Maybe, but I did at least get Dad's brains."

With nostrils flaring, "Didn't I use your face t' clean half my mirror maze last Halloween?"

"All the more reason not to upset me here. Now, do your springing sprites or so help me, you can do them with a gingertie log dangling from your neck."

Hamilton clenched the front of Jardine's suit in his fist and hoisted him up to eye level. His effervescence stank of old peaches as he opened his mouth and growled, "Only. H.P. Tells me. What. To. Do."

"Y-y-y-yes, Hamilton."

He was released. Jardine hit the violet bricks hard on his rear, his wrist twisted in a strange way beneath him. With a final grunt, Hamilton buzzed his stubby wings and marched off. Newman slapped his shoulder and followed, with Faust tailing behind last of all, tripping over his oversized feet.

The sniffle behind him reminded Jardine why he had come out here. When he turned, he found Rosencrantz on his hands and knees, pulling his notes back together and laying them one by one in his file folder. He kept pausing to push his wrist across his face, scrubbing off wetness that every pixie had long learned to pretend was never there.

"S-someday I'll get them back," Rosencrantz muttered, never meeting his eyes. "If I weren't stuck on laundry duty, if I just had a real job, if I could pass my s-stupid placement test, if I studied harder, if I were big like them, if I were born earlier, if H.P. l-liked me, if everyone didn't treat me like I'm still a nymph…"

"Um, Rosie…"

Rosencrantz groped for the fallen zinflax wand he'd been left with after shattering yet another cell phone fifty years ago. It was chipped and chewed all down the handle, and the black stain had worn away in long strips to reveal pink wood underneath, in addition to the natural spines along the bark. His fingers clenched with his teeth. "Th-they were scared of you. I wish they were scared of me like that. Someday, maybe. I'll sh-show them. I'll show everyone."

"Well. Uh. Not really _scared_ , but someone who studies as hard as you do probably knows how weak their immune systems are, yes? They can't fly and can hardly manage to _ping_ , let alone fight off sickness fast. Hey, they're _huge_ , but they're just playing cats and mouse. The size of their brains was cut down in egghood to increase their muscle mass." He reached over to dust the young pixie off. "Um, are you all right?"

"Yeah… Who are you?"

Jardine almost blinked. "It's me, Rosebud. Jardine."

"Who?"

"I work in the gardens?"

"We have gardens?"

"On the north side, by the Stadium, where we grow H.P.'s favorite falak beans? For his coffee?"

Rosencrantz did blink. "You can grow coffee?"

"Never mind." Deciding not to pester Rosencrantz with questions about what he was actually studying, the older pixie crouched up on his heels and slid off his sunglasses. "Listen, Rosebud. I've been talking with Sanderson, and I think I can solve your sleeping-in problem."

"You know about that, huh?" Rosencrantz fiddled with the vapor-stained tie that never stayed tucked in his suit jacket. "Sanderson told?"

"He mentioned it. So hey, have you heard of the jatican citrus? Orange fruit? Grows on trees in bunches? Produces more ethylene than any other plant known to our quadrant of the universe? Thrives in cold temperatures and direct moonlight?"

"Um. No. Wait. Just maybe once. Hawkins likes jatican juice, I think. H.P. said that in his book."

Jardine held out his hand and pulled the small pixie to his feet, then into the air. "Well, I was thinking jatican might help stimulate you in the mornings, so you could drink it instead of coffee. Which you're supposed to be too young for anyhow."

"Please don't tell H.P.," Rosencrantz stuttered, wings shaking at the apexes. "I'm just trying to increase my p-productivity."

"And it's not working, is it? Personally, I don't think coffee's for everyone. It just makes you nervous…er. And since I'm the resident expert on plants, I'd like to help you obtain some jaticans. What say you, Rosebud?"

Rosencrantz shuffled his papers against his chest. "I don't know. Th-this might go against protocol. I don't want H.P. to be mad at me."

Jardine patted his back. "You're with me, at least. I promise, if something happens and we get caught out after hours, I'll tell Cupid and H.P. and Jorgen that it was all my idea."

"Well, if you _promise_."

"Of course. Isn't it Pixie culture to always keep our word?" Jardine reached into the inner left pocket of his dirty gray jacket and pulled out his phone. He unlocked the screen and opened his long-distance teleportation app, then stopped. "Oh. By the way, since the war and the quarantining of the anti-pixies happened, now jaticans only grow in two or three accessible places in the entire Deep Kingdom. Well, for us, only one."

Rosencrantz's wings went so stiff, he dropped to the pavement. "I really hope you don't mean the A-Anti-Fairywinkle family's private gardens."

"It's the Anti-Fairywinkle family's private gardens. The moonlight greenhouse, to be precise. It's four in the morning in their time zone right now, which means I think they and the camarilla are all asleep." He threaded his fingers through the curls at the front of his hair as he sized the trembling pixie up and down. "Look at it this way: by showing up unannounced and inviting ourselves inside, we're pointing out to them what's wrong with their security system so that they can fix it in the future to protect themselves from more threatening thieves and rivals."

"Sounds mint," Rosencrantz said instantly, apparently not too put-off by the fact that this plan involved breaking and entering into the private property of someone who had on multiple occasions attempted to both dissect their kind and hold them for ransom in exchange for unreasonably high prices and cornbread.

"Now your wings are whirring! Next stop, Mount Olympus."

Getting through the Divide gate and into Anti-Fairy World was easy. Jardine merely flashed his Pixies Inc. ID badge at the camarilla member on duty (Anti-Kathy, Rosebud informed him quietly, since she was Anti-Cosmo's seat of Sky and in their zone it was already Munn's day of the week). As he put the badge away, the infinite-foot tall iron gate swung inward into the land of Hy-Brasil. The air temperature dropped fast. Warm curls of magic glinted in the air around their mouths and right hands. The murky sky faded from purple to red. "Whoa," Rosencrantz said, tailing him so closely that their wings clipped, "I've never seen anyone except H.P. get in that fast. Not even Sanderson!"

"That's because Sanderson isn't the one responsible for maintaining the cloudland economy by teaching the Anti-Pixies how to manage their greenhouses and pollinate their gingertie trees." Jardine veered in that direction as the gate shut with a clang and the locks went back up, just to throw Anti-Kathy off their trail. After they had moved out of the range of her echolocation and sensitive ears, Jardine changed course again. "Now, you've never been to Anti-Fairy World since you're barely a thousand five hundred" - a politer thing to say than "stuck on eternal laundry duty" - "but, I mean, Sanderson taught you _Anti-Coppertalon v. Marmot_ , right? If nothing else, you've read _Origin of the Pixies_ more times than any of us."

"Pixie starpieces don't even work in Anti-Fairy World. That's why when you were on the t-team to guard the fairy baby the boss and Anti-Cosmo stole, you had to borrow Anti-Fairy wands."

"Yes, exactly."

"I told you I study."

They flew on, dodging two-headed bats, spindly trees that rattled, and geysers spurting puffs of green-gray steam. Eventually, after half an hour, the Blue Castle with Anti-Cosmo's famous sign shimmered into view.

"'Welcome not', it says. Unless, of course, you're me."

"Look out for the arrows," Rosencrantz squeaked. "They're automatic. They shoot if they sense Seelie Court magic coming too close."

"I know. Anti-Cosmo told me when I started showing up with deliveries centuries ago. I also know that they're not very sensitive. The arrows and alarms will trip only in the presence of hot and dry magic. AKA, our Fairy friends. Pixie magic is too weak to trigger them." Jardine circled the castle widely and, on the west side, flew lower to ease open a wooden gate painted dark red like dripping berry juice. It smelled of lilacs, though. "This is where we'll find the private gardens. The moonhouse is just inside, to the east. I mean west- I always get my Earth and cloudland directions flipped. It's to the right, farther from the castle walls. Follow me, and don't step on the aggregates."

"The what?"

"Those groupings of sand, silt, and clay. Basically, the ground is lava. Keep to your wings."

Rosencrantz nodded. As Jardine skimmed lower to examine a handful of ashy soil, he stayed well out of the way himself.

"Do you see that beauty?" the older pixie asked after a moment. Rosencrantz hovered closer to peer over his shoulder, and he pointed towards a blue, rooty plant slumped over like some sort of slimy tentacled lump. "Because Anti-Fairy World is permanently under the Red Skies, it gets enough moonlight to grow blindweed year-round. One touch, ten minutes, and that plant will dissolve your skin to the bone."

"That's awful!"

"Oh, it's not its fault. It's written in its germplasm." Jardine kept moving between rows of scrubby vegetation, bobbing slowly, and soon paused again. "Hmm. This is interesting."

"Why?"

"Look. Anti-Wanda's old moonhouse is labeled 'Foop's Garden'." Jardine leaned his hands against the acrylic surface of the small building - one of the only transparent surfaces in Anti-Fairy World, he thought - as he squinted. Then he jabbed a finger forward. "Ah!"

"Did you find the jatican citrus?"

"No, but according to that sign over there, Foop's set up a series of acid scarifications to wake some Earth seeds from dormancy. You don't see a lot of that under the Red Skies, with how cold it is here. I'm not sure how I feel about that. He must be preparing to transplant them to a real hot house soon enough. He even has Earth dirt by the looks of it. I guess he's growing something that won't sprout in either Fairy World vapor or Anti-Fairy cinders. What's that there at the end? I can't read his handwriting, but I think it's supposed to say 'Boudacian imports'. Huh. That must have cost him a pretty lyn. I wonder how upset he'd be if I cross-pollinated his razitawart with his killfeather…?"

"Um." Rosencrantz glanced over his shoulder. "I don't think that's what we came here for."

"What? Oh, right." Jardine lifted the latch on the moonhouse door, tossing the razitawart a glance to let it know he'd be back for it later. "I haven't really been here in a decade. I wonder if there's much else that's new."

Inside, four long tables stretched entirely from one end of the moonhouse to the other. They were set on wheels for ease of movement (complete with handles like little pulleys to slide the tables from one side to another), but packed in tightly enough that there wasn't so much space for them to be slid. A low hum filled the air. The Anti-Pixie greenhouses trapped the heat better and required more fans blowing the cool air in. Having only a single one leaning in through the window, clicking and clacking, made Jardine set his teeth. He placed his right hand around his upper left arm.

The first table on the right - the one with the scarifications - was made up of heated shelves that sparkled lightly with the touch of recent magic. As Jardine prowled around the edges of the moonhouse, he skimmed his eyes carefully over each one of the many plants set out. Four. There were _four whole plants_ he didn't recognize at all. Five. Six! … Faintly, he noticed that Rosencrantz kept his wand drawn, even though in Hy-Brasil its powers were locked down.

And then Jardine squealed. " _Look!_ "

Rosencrantz straightened his wings and set his small hands to his hips. "Cheese and crackers, Jardine, I thought you were dying."

"Just look at all these seminal roots! Ooh, and these bromeliads! Yes, these ones over here in the corner, sprouting from the trees! Those little white flowers- aren't they gorgeous? Holy dust, that can't be! A pineapple! He has a _pineapple_ dunked in one of those new heat baths I invented! Although, I didn't design it quite like… this. Hmm. That's a clever way to keep it warm, although I hope he's using supplement packets to combat the side effects of long exposure and direct contact. Oh wow, he even has my Spriggish variant of brandispin; _Bryophyllum_ are my specialty, you know. This stuff can be turned into an energy source, and that's actually what powers the ever-burning torches they use here in Anti-Fairy World instead of electric lights." Running his hand over an array of purple, succulent leaves, Jardine couldn't help but gush. "I don't remember giving him this. I think he stole it from my greenhouse when my back was turned. Golly, that kid certainly knows how to flatter a fellow."

"Jardine, um, the citrus."

"We'll get to that. But first, look at _this_ old charmer." Even though he was supposed to hate the guy he'd practically helped raise, Jardine couldn't help but let out an appreciative whistle as he touched the cacaquark. "I must admit, Foop's learning rapidly every day, and he knows his stuff. Come here and take a look at these flats. All these sprouts. You know, when you perform crown division, you divide the plant into multiple parts. Each 'plantlet' needs crowns and roots, which need to be kept moist, and the transplanting thing has to be done when the plant is in its dormant stage."

"What's this?" Rosencrantz asked, reaching out towards an enormous black flower blooming in the middle of the second table, beside an elf cactus.

The older pixie swatted his wrist away. "Don't touch it. That's cometbloom. Its gibberellin count is off the charts. One touch of it to your blood or stomach and it will promote cell elongation like you wouldn't believe."

"What's that mean?"

"It will make you grow too big too fast."

"That sounds okay," Rosencrantz said with a shrug. "I'm small and I'd like to grow up to be tall like Bayard. Except I don't do mustaches."

Jardine patted his head. "Well, it sounds cute, until you realize that it also speeds up the development of your reproductive areas. Too much of it will make you hit your menstrual cycle early. And explaining what that is isn't my job, so ask Longwood. After all, _he's_ a gyne."

"I know what a menstrual cycle is," the smaller pixie insisted. "I read everything."

"Oh, and this tasty treat," Jardine said, squatting down and pointing to a creeping vine across the path, "is thickly laced with abscisic acid. I mean, a lot a lot. It will stunt your growth. It's also the reason why plants can survive the winter. Without ABA, buds and seeds would sprout in warm winters. Plants would 'wake up' from their dormant state and start to shed the protective coat that kept them alive, and once the coat was gone, a late bout of snow would strike them down."

"Like diapause?"

"I don't know what that is. Aha! What's this now? Carrowroot? In the Deep Kingdom? Where did they even _find_ this? I don't ever remember seeing these on the checklists of the trade ships that've come back from the planes of existence beyond 12. But Anti-Fairies can't legally fly cloudships… Rosebud, Rosebud, see how the stem is girdled? Foop air-layered it; he's trying to induce root formation. For carrowroot in Hy-Brasil? Curious choice." Jardine bounced one of the branches against his palm. "This is really interesting. I'm going to have to take a cutting of this for one of my own flats back home." Bringing the stem to his teeth, he nipped it three nodes down.

"Oh!" Rosencrantz bobbed past him as Jardine wrapped the cutting in his handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. "Jardine. Look."

Not much further along the third table stood a short, wide, scruffy-looking fruit tree, tucked in a large brown pot marbled with swirls of black down its curved sides. Long, orange fruits glistened along its twisted branches.

"The jatican. A jatican with thin rootstocks, hence its stunted size, but a jatican nonetheless- I can sense all that ethylene from here. Good eyes, Rosebud."

Rosencrantz shot him a beaming smile. He whirred over to the tree and gave one fruit on a dangling branch a yank. It snapped back with a comedic _twang_.

"I got it! I got the citrus!" He thrust it triumphantly into the air, humming his wings. "I feel like I'm in one of Finley's video games."

"Very nice. Now, are these nine-petaled flowers spit-orchids? I've never seen a black and yellow variety before, just red and white…"

"Um. J-Jardine?" Rosencrantz brought the fruit to his chest. He turned his head one way, then the other. "I just got really cold."

"Mmhm, you're in a moonhouse. All these plants thrive best in cold temperatures. That's how it works. Ceiling panels perform moonlight conversion. Upper school stuff. Huh, check this out, Rosebud. I didn't realize Foop was smart enough to know how to-" He stiffened on the last word.

Rosencrantz was right. It _had_ just gotten colder in the moonhouse.

"Jardine?" the young pixie whispered, slinking back to take a hold of his elbow. The lone fan whirred on in the background.

"Oh, aphids and whiteflies. Let me guess…"

"Keep your hands where I can see them," crowed a familiar High South Region accent at his back. "Unless you think you're fast enough, perhaps. No? Good. Now. Turn around, and give me the fruit."

Slowly, Jardine lowered his wings and rotated around on his heels. The speaker, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a lean anti-fairy child, barely five hundred years old and whose thick black curls, even while he was floating, barely came up to Jardine's chest. The two pixies dipped their heads to him nonetheless. Even so, Jardine kept Rosencrantz behind him by one arm. Foop held his glimmering plastic training wand (He'd finally ditched the ridiculous baby bottle, apparently) in their direction, scratching at the swirls in his hair with the claws on his right hand. He wore silk pajamas missing two of the buttons on the shirt. Light purple and decorated with grinning, snarling, or howling white skulls from neck to ankles. Shed tufts of blue fur fell from between the wrinkles every time he shifted his weight.

Foop cocked his tall ears forward. "Charmed to see you again after so many years of unexcused absence, Jardine. Did you bring me another supply of ladybugs? With sugar-watered wings just the way I like them, so they can't fly away?"

"I-it's four in the morning," Jardine stuttered. His wings chirped once. "You should be roosting."

"I should. And I'm not. So do forgive me if I come off a bit cranky. Now hand over my citrus, you pair of grubby thieves. Father always insists that you're so much better than that."

Rosencrantz looked to Jardine. "I have to?"

"Yes," Foop said impatiently, keeping his right hand extended, "and the carrowroot cutting. It won't be of much use to you anyway, if you can't keep it moist before sticking it in a supply of vapor."

Jardine balled up the handkerchief and threw it in the cinder-strewn wooden planks between his feet. "What is your problem? You weren't this picky and defensive back when you were fifty."

" _My_ problem? Ha! Now I know why I'm always drawn to say 'That's rich' when I see one of you."

He was still waiting. Slowly, reluctantly, Rosencrantz uncurled his arm and held up the stolen fruit. Unwilling to let him get any closer should the anti-fairy choose to strike, Jardine took the citrus from his hand and tossed it over. Foop's claws closed around the jatican's tough skin. It disappeared into the pocket on the left side of his pajama shirt.

"Now march," he ordered, flicking his wand back towards the moonhouse door.

"Th-this is ridiculous," Jardine protested, but moved instinctively to obey as he spoke. "Foop, it's _me_. Mister Jardine! Caudwell and I have babysat you every time you've visited Pixie World. I used to read you my textbooks when you went down for your nap. I gave you earthworms to play with. We marathoned "Batman" cartoons for weeks. I thought we were friends."

"Friends, enemies- I require a wide sample to confirm my research. These days I'm trying to study the effects of diet upon the Fairykind. Not that you ought to care about it now. I don't yet have much to show for my efforts. Of course…" His eyes slid from the older pixie down to the younger and back again, and he started to lower his wand. "I may be in my 'working-with-plants' phase of life at this point in time, but I'm always in the market to study a more… _pertinent_ type of asexual reproduction."

"You're sick," Jardine hissed back, still keeping an arm in front of Rosencrantz's chest. "If you think I'll let you dissect Rosebud like I watched you tear apart those white rats when Anti-Cosmo wasn't watching, you're jacked in the numbskull."

Foop smirked. "Actually, I was referring to you, Prince Charming. Your body is much closer to maturity than his. That should lend itself to a far more accurate study. You ought to be proud. How's about it? Just one night of you lying on my desk while I slice your head open with my knives."

 _"No!"_

"Ooh, a pity." Drifting dangerously forward, the anti-fairy cupped Jardine's chin with his soft hand. With the left, he twirled his wand. "Shame this is my playing field, bubbles, and you're out of magic. Now, to business. That's what you pixies like, isn't it? This will be better for both of us if you don't struggle, old friend. You of all people should understand that plants are less hardy when stressed."

Jardine jerked back. Out of instinct, he whipped out the older of his two phones. Despite having its sharp antenna extended, the cracked casing and out-of-date technology made a far less threatening image, somehow, than even Rosencrantz's dented wand. "Wh-what the darkweed is wrong with you?"

"Ask your Mr. Caudwell," he said with a bored shrug. Jardine removed his shades and fixed him with a cold stare.

"Foop, I am over 215,000 years old. Are you seriously looking for a fight? Magic or not, I'm almost certain I can take you."

Rosencrantz tightened his fingers in Jardine's arm. "Me too. Oh, you have no idea. I-I can be pretty scary. I have to fight back a lot. You'd all be surprised at how strong I actually am."

"Mm." Foop massaged one eye socket with the heel of his hand, never once lowering his wand. "At this time of night? I can certainly take you down- that's not the question. However, I'm also functioning on three hours of sleep between the last two days, so I'm not especially confident in my control of my powers, which means I can't promise I won't accidentally kill you in the process. A pity. I'll have to go physical. I do so _hate_ going physical." The wand went back in his scabbard. Foop took hold of his wrist and flexed it. His black claws flashed in a stripe of moonlight. The fan's low humming began to fade. "Might I inquire, what possessed you to ravish mine and my mother's gardens anyway?"

"I just wanted a jatican citrus," whimpered Rosencrantz. He still clung to his useless wand. The spines of the zinflax bark were wearing at his hands- he was bleeding beads of pink and green. "Jardine said it would make me more alert in the mornings. Oh dust, th-this is all my fault."

That brought the anti-fairy pause. He blinked. Four times. "Jaticans don't wake you up. They prevent scurvy. They make your limbs feel heavy. They were used to tip the blades of knives back in the days of war because their juice is incredibly painful if it gets into cuts in Anti-Fairy skin. If anything, they cause insomnia, but that doesn't have any effect when it comes to the morning. Quite the opposite, in fact. _You_ told me this. What in _Rhoswen's name_ made you think of trying that?"

"Because rosebuds," Jardine said, pushing his shades up his nose in slow motion with two fingers, "open in the presence of ethylene."

Foop stared at him. His ears flicked down. "Is… is that a pun? Did you just break into the middle of my private moonlight greenhouse in the _middle_ of my family's gardens in the middle of Anti-Fairy World in the middle of the _night_ and _risk your lives_ for a _pun_?"

"It was a good pun," Jardine said defensively.

Foop looked at his claws, and then at the pixie. Then he reached into his pocket and tossed the jatican citrus to Rosencrantz, who caught it with a startled yip. "You know something bub, I'm not even mad. Keep it. This one's on me."

"So it works?" Rosencrantz asked curiously, taking a cautious whiff. His tongue flicked over the rough surface of the fruit. His eyebrows shot up, he twitched his shoulders, but he at least managed to hold a steady expression. Mostly.

"Heh heh… Oh, I can't imagine that it will, but just for _that_ , you have my full permission to take as many jaticans from my moonhouse as you want. But at a _reasonable hour of the night_ next time. I don't want to reset my alarm traps more than I absolutely have to."

Jardine giggled nervously along with the anti-fairy for a long time, holding Rosencrantz's arm and inching sideways in the process, until at last, Foop wiped a pretend tear from beneath his eye and flicked his wand in Jardine's direction.

"You do realize I'm still going to try dissecting you, right?"


	30. (42) Loyalty

_Summary:_ Gary is still shaken about the events of "Solo". A party couldn't cheer him up, but a conversation with Rosencrantz sparks an idea…

 _Characters:_ Gary, Sanderson, assorted pixies, Rosencrantz

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Fight or Flight?" / "Opportunity"

 _Prerequisites:_ "Solo"

 _A/N:_ The song mentioned in this piece is "Once a Day" by Connie Smith.

* * *

 **42\. Loyalty** (Post-"School's Out! The Musical")

 _Year of Leaves; Summer of the Last Berry_

* * *

As a general rule, the chairs in the cloudlands were way too small to fit the typical human butt. They creaked and sagged when the wood was soft, or snapped into glittering magical splinters when it was hard. Booth seats were out of the question with the way their backs rubbed beneath his shoulder blades. The thumping of the music rattled the sodaglass beside his hand and made the tassel of his battered graduation cap bounce against his cheek. And wands and wings, he wasn't ready for karaoke. Not without the proper accompanist, and not when he looked like he'd just caused a wreck between a couple of innocent trains. A scrap of his shirt had caught and torn against the back of his seat. Even floating, the sugar bar's tables were set low, and one was prone to jarring their knees against the underside of hard purple wood or glinting metal.

Despite this last revelation, Gary had rejected the sticky linoleum floor and squeezed his body into the suffocating space between the tabletop and one of the awkward chairs anyway, because he was already pretty far gone and, judging by the way his life had been as of late, he apparently didn't deserve nice things. Straighten the hem of the concert tee that Mr. Sanderson had insisted you wear when you all went out because it has a blue rabbit ironed onto it that would keep the anti-fairies away. Suck it up. Put on a happy face… Can't you pull off a happy face?

'Pull off'. Bad choice of words, perhaps. At this point, as he lay with his head on his crossed arms, staring at the cherubs and aluxo'ob twirling around on the colored blinking squares of the dance floor, the idea of ripping off his entire face didn't sound entirely bad.

"We're not dumping Gary off to be a plaything of the Fairies since the Flappy plan fell through, Springs," Mr. Sanderson scolded, clicking his spoon around the insides of his frozen yogurt cup. His face was still scratched up from taking one too many tumbles off the tandem bike, and as he scraped the dish, he kept perfectly in time with the beat of the bar's music. Not a trace was to be left- it was just the Pixie way. Not a single speck of memory.

Mr. Keight tightened his fingers around the packet of M&Ms in his hand. Over the rustling of candy wrappers, clattering of elves and brownies loading up dirty dishes, and muttered business deals in shady back corners, he said, "I'm telling you, I could use him in the warehouse. He's more of a beanstalk than our apartment, but he has the muscles for carting around some of the bigger boxes. It would save us so much wasted expenses to cut telekinetic manipulation from the bill."

"Hire an anti-fairy, K," offered Mr. Thane. "They work for cheap."

"Your opinion has been taken into consideration," was the stiff response, and Mr. Sanderson butted in with, "The results are here, and your opinion is total garbage. You're drunk on fizzy grape."

Mr. Springs pushed his shades closer to his eyes with one finger. The pink and yellow club lights glinted off the dark plastic. Why they were all wearing them when it was dim enough for the ultraviolet lights to turn Gary's sleeves light purple, no one had bothered to ask. This too was the Pixie way. He said, "Would you care to be the one to explain to H.P. about the contract violation with Anti-Cosmo that would occur if Keight _did_ take in an Unseelie at a snap?"

"Whoa, he's in charge of hiring help in the warehouse." Mr. Thane pried open the tab of yet another tiny soda can and poured himself a shot. "I'm just a handyman. Don't pull me under if you're planning to drown, _hic_."

Gary said nothing as the four pixies argued, but he did turn his head so his other cheek could get its fair share of being pressed into the scratchy velcro watch on his wrist. This was the most he'd moved for twenty-five minutes, so it was really quite something.

"That was the most he'd moved for twenty-five minutes," noted Mr. Springs (Thank you, Mr. Springs).

"Chew on it," Mr. Keight said with a pat to Gary's shoulder. "You'll want to work for me in the end. I know the guy who serves breakfast on Muffin Mondays. I can get you in good standing. You'll find yourself quite satisfied in life."

"Thank you very kindly for the offer," he mumbled, tongue scraping the hem of his sleeve, "but if it's all rightadoodle with you guys, I would highly prefer not to have to make this decision right now. Besides, I'm returning to my edusensational high school again in the fall. Your work week starts with Friday afternoons and I can't live that way if I'm working full-time."

Mr. Sanderson clinked his spoon back in his dish. When Gary glanced over, he steepled his fingers and leaned in. "You don't seem to be doing hot, boy. There wasn't a rhyming word in that statement."

"I'unno. You'd be surprisi…fied by what I can do with 'with' and 'this'…"

Mr. Thane swiped Mr. Sanderson's spoon and clanged it hard against his glass. "Marris, fetch the boy another mint supreme."

As the others broke into bickering about how he'd hardly tasted the last one before Mr. Sanderson had taken it for himself, Gary forced a thin, rueful smile. "Whoa, ooh, hey, hey- there's no need to fight. I appreciate all you're trying to do to boost my spirits, even though you know I don't care much for sugar. Heh heh. I really-weally do. See? I can still rhyme with glee."

"As if we care about you," scoffed Mr. Thane. Leaning against Mr. Keight's shoulder, he spilled an entire packet of king-sized Reese's Peanut Butter Cups into his mouth. "I just want to leech off your human-sized bowl of ice cream."

"Aww, but you're going to black out!"

"A blackout every now and again is good for the soul. _Hic!_ Gary, you're eighteen. What say we could swing by a place I know before we drop you off and do that boosting spirits thing with a dash of good ol' human spirits."

"Oooohh, yeeaaahhh, I don't really know about that. You have to be twenty-one in my country in order to enjoy anything like that. If I'm not horrendifically mistaken, I'm only seventeen."

"Wink. And the cloudlands is its own country. _Hic._ "

Mr. Springs tilted his shades upward. "I sincerely hope you did not just say 'wink'."

"The sunglasses, brah."

"Your 'sunglasses' are in your root beer."

He squinted. "Huh. So they are." Then, lifting one hand against the glare of a sweeping spotlight, Mr. Thane stared across the dance floor. "Hey, aren't those Elliston and Marshfield?"

A pair of undersized pixies were indeed hunkering behind a bright orange barstool. Mr. Keight spat an unfamiliar curse word and catapulted over Mr. Thane's head. "You two are _so_ busted. This is no place for two juveniles under twenty-five thousand years of age."

"Heh," Mr. Thane slurred, "maybe _he_ should be called Mr. Springs."

One of the little pixies rolled aside, and the other flared his wings and kicked into the air. "Uh-oh. Scammell! Cortes! Hit the deck!"

"Oh, seriously?" A tablecloth flipped up. A third pixie poked out his head. "You're just going to snitch on us like that after we covered for you from Longwood?"

"All four of you are going to be stuffing boxes with packing peanuts once I catch you!"

"Amateur." Mr. Springs flipped open his phone and snapped a picture of several guilty faces mid-yelp before they dove behind the bar counter and scrambled away. "Texting H.P.… uploading evidence… And send."

With a snort, Mr. Sanderson stood and began loosening his tie. "It's not that this hasn't been a riot, but I have a truly memorable performance to put on. My public awaits me."

Gary raised his head just a tad without really moving his neck. "Whoa there, are you really- I thought dragging me out here to cheer me up was a spur of the moment decisi- You just… You wear that red jumpsuit costume under your… Okay, I'm choosing not to judge you over this."

"You're singing too, aren't you? Your voice borders on squeaky, but it will break up the deep monotony of mine. Fairies like that."

Gary hesitated over an old birthday memory before he sat up in full. "Thank you very much for the offer, but I'm not in the mood for karaoke tonight. I wouldn't recognize any Fairy songs that were mixed in there anyway, I don't want to make a fool of myself, or you."

"Because you look more of a fool when you're _not_ wearing that cheerful pink sweater vest," snickered Mr. Thane.

Fair. The black and blue concert tee really didn't match his graduation cap.

"Whoa!" As the pixie turned to go, Gary grabbed Mr. Sanderson's elbow and spun him around. "Don't be a silly-willy! You can't simply waltz up there looking like that! Your hair is all mussed in the back. You're becoming grass. Here." Kneeling on the floor, a splash of water dabbed on his palms, a little swirl of his fingers sliding through ink-colored hair… For a moment there, it gave him a speck of purpose again.

"Oh," Mr. Sanderson said crisply, pleasantly, when Gary withdrew his hands. "Thank you."

"You are so very welcome, Mr. Sanderson, sir! I wish you the very best of luck out there. You are going to _wow_ them."

"Luck is for Anti-Fairies." But Mr. Sanderson tossed him an expression that was almost a smile before he whirred his wings and skimmed away.

As Gary settled himself down again, this time in Mr. Keight's old seat so he might face the karaoke stage, a leprechaun lady clinked a glass bowl on the table between his cold unsalted fries and half-eaten cucumber sandwich. Oh, right. The mint supreme. She used both hands to lift it from her tray, and looked up at him with a sparkle of hope in her blue eyes. _Flip on the charm, switch on the smile…_

"My goodness! Now, that's a mint supreme indeed! And not simply that, but it looks fantastic. Marris, wasn't it? Wasn't it Marris? Dear Marris, I can _personally_ guarantee that we don't have any dessert quite this stunning back where I'm from on Earth."

"Only the best for a sweet human drake like y'self, hon. Please take all you like, and _you're_ allowed to leave the premises with whatever you can carry. The marshmallows are on me. Enjoy, sugar."

After prying his spoon out from under a cascade of warm cookies, chocolate syrup, and rainbow sprinkles (his favorite color), Gary popped a bite in his mouth, and winced. "Wow. They… go all out here with the sweet flavoring, don't they?"

Mr. Thane chuckled to himself on Gary's left. As he straightened, he pushed his hat up with his thumb. "Mmyep, they just _adore_ you little angels up here. Good for business when someone buys in bulk and ain't at a risk for sugarloading. _Hic._ "

"Heh heh. Do all pixies slip up in their grammar when they get drunk like this, or is that just a 'you' thing?" Mr. Thane did not answer, but Gary really hadn't been expecting to receive one. He replaced his spoon and began to stir. And after a moment of it, he tuned out Mr. Thane's chatter and brought his attention back to the karaoke stage. Mr. Sanderson was up there now, a fist planted to his hip and his eyes rolled so high, the shades on his nose didn't quite conceal them. Evidently, he recognized the song that had been handed off to him with the star-shaped microphone, and he'd been hoping for one that wasn't quite this slow.

"… _until now, I'm down to hurtin' once a day. Once a day, all day long. And once a night, from dusk 'til dawn. The only time I wish you weren't gone. Is once a day, every day, all day long."_

The whooping crowd drowned out half of the last sentence, but it rang in Gary's ears nonetheless. Just as he reached up to cover one of them, Mr. Keight made a reappearance, dragging one struggling pixie after him by the wrist. The other rode on his shoulders, already slumped over, square jaw digging into bristly hair. "I'm marching these two straight back home. Marshfield and Scammell scampered off. Springs, leave a copy of the receipt in my bin and I'll pay everyone back tomorrow."

"You're on."

One of the little pixies - it was Mr. Cortes by the askew hat - grinned up at Gary. They'd met once when Sanderson had been scrambling for tax deductibles, and he didn't look quite so intimidating now. Each of his limbs shivered, and he still had half a dozen empty wrappers clenched in his fists. "I ate an entire Kit-Kat all by myself. I can't fly in a straight line anymore."

"Yep, chocolate bars will do you in, little friend. You know… Wait." Gary pushed his tower of mint ice cream across the table to Mr. Thane, who accepted it with eager fingers. "I'll come with. That is, if it's okay by you, Mr. Keight, sir."

"You want to wrestle these miscreants to bed?" the pixie asked, arching both brows.

"Oh, it was fan _tabulously_ great of you guys to take me out, but I don't really wanna be here. Mr. Springs, tell Mr. Sanderson too that I'm going back with Mr. Keight."

Mr. Springs folded his arms. "Fair enough. Be sure you get someone to _ping_ you home before the lack of breathable air in the cloudlands suffocates your human lungs. Don't forget the ruling of _Tenderfir v. Redbrush_."

"Trust me, I will most certainly not. Come here, you." Gary swung Mr. Elliston into his arms, and flicked a hand in good-bye to the two pixies still sitting at the table. Mr. Thane waved back. Mr. Keight shrugged. With a few button presses and a shake of his cell phone, they _ping_ ed off.

Gary had never enjoyed the melting sensation. It tasted like expired sour cream and burnt toast, all dry and crunchy under his tongue. Pine needles flashed down his skin until he split at the seams. A jump this long meant the fire ant sensation kept up for nearly ten seconds, but the beauty of Pixie World was, at least, that it floated above Mushroom Rock, smack in the center of Kansas. No matter where you were in the States or clouds above, it wasn't terribly far away.

Mr. Keight set them down halfway up the eastern of the two apartment buildings (Wait- western. Directions were flipped up here for dust knows why). He put the jittering Mr. Cortes to bed first as Gary stumbled in the stairwell and tried to catch his breath on air richer in dust motes and lacking a bit in oxygen. "Off by five floors," he said when he returned without him, "and I could taste Marlowe's imprint in the energy field as he passed us in the elevator. He'll be at the top. Walking will be much faster."

"I'm not complaining." Gary boosted Mr. Elliston against his shoulder and tagged behind him. "I hate small spaces, you remember."

"So, hotshot." Mr. Keight fell back and jammed his elbow between Gary's ribs. "You know, why don't you come by the warehouse with me when we're done here? We could even get you fitted in a uniform. You would look dashing in gray and white."

Gary felt his lower eyelid twitch. What he'd look like was what he felt like - gray and gloomy - and that kind of sort of wasn't exactly the way he wanted the rest of his life to go. With that thought in mind, he slid the worn graduation cap from his head and twisted one particular corner between his forefinger and thumb. "I just can't do that, sir. It isn't me."

His response? An eyeroll. "Humans. There's nothing angelic about them. C'est life. Okay. The warehouse option is still on the table, but I can't promise it'll be there the next time I bump into you."

"While it does sound fundelicious, I can't make this decision tonight, Mr. Keight."

The pixie huffed, and probably not because of the stairs. He was flying, after all. He sort of hovered around Gary's shoulder like a gnat while the human took the steps two at a time (Eases the burn on the lower leg muscles, soothes back pain, _and_ increases speed!) "Then what, may I ask, are your plans for life now?"

"Easy peasy! I run the Learnatorium with Betty until I graduate high school and truant officer Shallowgrave gets off my back. She and I are _soul_ mates. We've known that since the day we first met after our parents crashed their cars together. I want to be her best friend forever. Maybe we'll raise some kids together, or maybe we won't. I don't care either way. Although she's _amazing_ and flawless in every possible way, I don't need to marry her to be happy. The kids we watch at the daycare can be our kids, even if we don't adopt them. That's my plan."

"You know, Robert - I mean, Flappy Bob - is gone. No one is paying you. That facility is enormous, and expensive. You won't last a month on your own."

"… Then Mr. Dimmadome mows the place down, I imagine. He's already shown up to torch most of our giant stuffed bears and destroy childhood dreams like mine, so I don't imagine he'll have a problem with it." Gary wiped his brow with the back of his wrist, and then his cheek, moving carefully around little Mr. Elliston. "And… I suppose we sell our souls to Mr. Leadly. As a hunter of the unusual and supernatural, he's been trying to buy us off Flappy for _years_ because he can detect the Pixie magic around that place and on our skin."

"So that's it?" Mr. Keight's voice took on a sneer. Maybe it was the sugar, maybe it was his frustration, but either way, he started slipping out of his practiced monotone and granting emphasis to certain words. He zipped behind Gary's head to linger near his other shoulder. "Some rich guy turns the pair of you into his butler and maid just to keep you around in his twisted collection? You give _up_ on wanting to make a difference in the world? You give _up_ on trying to be useful? You want to end up as one of _those_ humans who waits for somebody else to solve your problems? Newsflash: Sometimes, we magic-slingers don't _want_ to make the world a better place for all of you. We _want_ you to learn to look after yourselves. Otherwise, where does that leave us? Our powers abused, and you humans kicking back and treating us as your slaves."

Gary stopped to catch his breath as he reached the fifth floor up. When he bent over, he stared up his forehead at Mr. Keight. "Aww, being treated as a slave with no choice in your future. My goodness, that sounds horrid."

Mr. Keight whipped off his shades. Higher up in the stairwell, Gary heard a pixie or two scuffle back, wings brushing against the wall. Not wanting to get involved, and Gary didn't blame him. Mr. Elliston, who had been on the verge of crashing from his sugar intake for some time now, clenched his little fingers tighter into the white sleeves of Gary's t-shirt. Human and pixie stared at one another, until Gary blinked twice and dropped his gaze to the ground.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Keight. I didn't mean it. I was just thinking. Maybe when I'm fifty-four, H.P. will want our help in a new thirty-seven-year plan. That'll give us something to do."

"And in the meantime, what?" asked Mr. Keight as he slid his shades back into place. "You have no funds on Earth. What part of that are you not getting? I'm offering you an opportunity, and you're turning up your nose. This is your chance at a better life and futu-"

" _Nothing_ will make my life better unless Betty gets her stupid memories back and everything goes back to being _the way it's_ supposed _to be!_ Our parents are dead- Kenny is stuck in Burger World- Flappy found _his_ mom and dad again. But what about _us?_ He made a wish to put the world right, and _we weren't part of it_. We didn't even belong with him! Not the human world, not with Fairies- You've never had a nice thing to say to me until you thought I'd come crawling to you on my knees because you think I- you think I- you- you think I'll work for cheap because I have no other… I…"

Mr. Elliston whimpered at his shoulder, and Mr. Keight did nothing more than curl his lower lip. Gary leaned over the stairway railing and squeezed his eyes shut until the sick, swimmy feeling faded away. "I'm sorry," he mumbled again without turning around. He wasn't. "I just don't know how things are 'supposed to be' anymore. I was born in Kansas. Maybe I don't belong in Dimmsdale. I've always had a foot in two worlds. You know who I am. But maybe I don't belong up here either."

"Don't blow up like that again. Not everyone is as patient with you as I am." Stiffly, in a very Pixie-like way, Mr. Keight pushed open the door that led from the cold gray stairwell and back into a warm purple hallway. Gary followed him in silence down the hall to the proper door. There, Mr. Keight pressed the fob attached to a cord at his hip against the lockpad. Despite the keyhole in the door, it popped right open. "I used to work in laundry once," he explained over his shoulder. "There are certain perks. H.P. never took back my master key."

"Ooh, dazzling." He said it with emotion.

The pixie nudged the door further with his hip. Gary adjusted his weight as Mr. Elliston clung to his neck, and held it open for Mr. Keight. He had to duck to follow himself. His cap bumped against the ceiling. As much as Gary hated feeling trapped, at least it wasn't as bad in the apartment as it would have been in the elevator. He focused on that. It really wasn't so bad once you got used to it.

Mr. Keight waved his hand around the clean living space. A bedroom branched off either side. "Just put Elliston down as-is; don't bother shoving him into his pajamas. That nymph was my own intern once, and he's always out like a soaked genie. You know what I mean."

Gary studied the apartment set-up before tiptoeing between the kitchen counter and a few random chairs. One toppled as he passed, but once he'd settled Mr. Elliston down in the room on the right (and apologized to a roommate who stirred blearily from sleep), he snuck out to set it on four legs again.

"There we go. All tucked in." Mr. Keight picked up the second chair that Gary had knocked over, and sighed. "When I texted H.P., he said their scolding would have to wait until morning, of course. And by that time, I think they might forget what it is they've done."

Gary stared at several stacks of paper lined on the counter beside the bananas and oatmeal boxes. "Do pixies forget things easily?"

"Sugarloaded ones do."

"It'll be a long time before they're grown up, won't it?"

"Oh, just another two hundred thousand years. But they'll have themselves under control long before then, I hope." He folded his arms behind his neck and stretched. "Well. Unless you've changed your mind about touring the warehouse, I suppose I'd better escort you home."

"Actually…"

"Yes?"

For nearly twenty seconds, Gary just gazed down at his scuffed pink and white sneakers. Mr. Keight waited in expectant silence until he said, "Do you mind if I stick around here for awhile, sir? I told Betty I was heading out to get her a present for her birthday, and she'll know something's up if I get back too early. I can clean some dishes. Gather up litter. File papers. Just tell me what needs to be done, and I'll make myself useful."

Mr. Keight considered this, then shrugged. "I don't see why not. It saves me the _ping_ ing costs anyway. Rosencrantz is doing laundry in solitude tonight. He'd appreciate company. I'll text Longwood to _ping_ you down to Dimmsdale when he clocks out for the night. You have until eight. That's nine o'clock in the Rainbow time zone where you live."

"Thank you, sir."

The pixie swept off his hat with a flourish and waved it as he bowed. "No, thank you, good sir Garrett. I'll jump on any excuse to spend an evening at a sugar bar. And also on any excuse that lets me bail out while I'm still sober. Especially without the others taunting me for actually taking my job seriously. Unlike some people, I prefer to keep a clean head."

They walked down the stairs instead of _ping_ ing. In silence. At this time of summer, what little breeze could be found floating about the cloudlands always picked up in speed. As they stepped outside, Gary tipped his face upward and shut his eyes. It ruffled his ginger hair, stroked his cold cheeks, and flitted away again.

On that note, the two parted ways. Mr. Keight to the warehouse to check up on his colleagues, and Gary westward to the fringes of the evergreen woods that fenced the little city in. Eastward. He went along with his hands shoved deep, deep down in his pockets. He whistled. The purple cloudstone bricks faded into actual solid clouds. Ice crystals crunched like sand beneath his sneakers' soles.

It took only three minutes to cross a city built at Pixie scale. The laundromat consisted of a thick and ugly red rectangle detracting from the natural beauty of the surrounded trees. Were they magical trees? Imported from Earth and grown in natural dirt instead of dug-up vapor? Either way, they were green. Gary pushed open the door and called, "Goooood evening, Rosebud."

The little pixie jumped, scattering creased notecards in five directions. Gary dropped to a knee and scooped a batch up.

"Ooh, what's this? Hey, still studying? I thought H.P. said he wasn't planning to give you another placement test after what happened last time."

Rosencrantz bit his lower lip. With rapid jerks of eyes and hands, he rearranged a stack of pink notes in their numbered order. "H-he definitely won't if I don't study."

Inching his fingers out from beneath the nearest washing machine, Gary flipped the card over and wrinkled his nose. "'At what temperature will water kill a genie?'"

"Um. 100 degrees? Er… 200?"

"'Temperature is irrelevant. A wet genie cannot maintain his or her body temperature, loses all ability to perform magic, and is at risk for hypothermia.' 100 degrees Celsius, or 212 degrees Fahrenheit, is the highest temperature Anti-Fairy magic can reach."

"Oh."

Gary handed him the card, and Rosencrantz took it while avoiding eye contact. "I came to help you with the laundry."

"I-it's okay. You can tell Sanderson I'm doing fine. I know you need to get back home."

"Actually, I asked if I could stay!" He rubbed the pixie's hair and snatched a dirty pair of gray dress pants from a nearby bin. As he began to examine them for stains, he said, "Betty and I used to make our rounds through the city to check for any magic leakage at Mr. Crocker's and Ms. Doombringer's places around this time, but we don't do that so much anymore, and I have the evening free."

Silence.

"Oh. My. Goodness." Gary held one of the shirts in front of his chest. "I've never noticed it when you guys are wearing these, but look at how tiny they are!"

Rosencrantz hardly spared him a glance. "That's Powell's. Put it in the third machine."

"You can tell?" Gary asked, tossing it in as instructed.

"It's not a big deal. I-I've just been doing this for awhile. You get used to tasting all the unique imprints in the energy field." He brought the socks in his hands to his nose. "It's easier to recognize before they get washed. After they've been dried, it's harder. So, I try to sort them into the different machines in order, so I can at least get them to the right room, or the right floor. I'm not very good at it, though."

Gary reached into the bin again and drew out a piece of red cloth. "Huh. This looks like a skirt. I thought all of you pixies were boys."

"Almost," said Rosencrantz, taking it. He gave it a sharp flap. "This is Emery's. She stays in Pixie World for a week every summer before she goes back to working at Amity, assigning godparents to human kids and stuff. That white coat is Logan's. The gloves are Commelina's."

When Rosencrantz dropped the skirt into the nearest machine, Gary leaned over and fished it out again. "Hey, is it okay to wash this with whites?"

"Oh. I guess not. I do everything wrong."

"Hey, don't say that about yourself, friend." Coming down on one knee again, Gary placed a hand to each one of the pixie's thin shoulders. "You're special and you matter. Like Betty would say, 'Making mistakes makes better future takes'."

Rosencrantz's lower lip began to tremble. Gary pulled back, reaching one hand automatically for the candy stashed away in his pocket. But after removing his shades to wipe his eyes and nose, Rosencrantz simply swallowed and turned back to his work. "Betty really means a lot to you, doesn't she?"

"Smoof, that's the understatement of the century." Sitting back on his heels, Gary massaged his temples. "She's my entire world."

"Oh, okay. Maybe that's not creepy for humans."

Now his face was in his hands. "You don't understand. Don't tell Mr. Sanderson this, but I found out just today that he and H.P. locked up all our memories from the time before they took us in. I mean, it had to be them, right? And what's worse is, I don't know _when_ it happened." Gary shut his eyes. "Was it when he first met me? Was it after what happened with Betty? Did they get me too? I just don't know, but I literally have _no_ memories of my old human life- except that Mr. Sanderson mentioned once or twice that my parents were divorced. 'Cabrera' is my mom's name. I don't even remember my dad's. He was taking me back to her house when the car crash killed him."

Rosencrantz shifted uneasily. "Yeah, sometimes cars do that."

Gary grabbed another shirt and attacked it with the nearest spray bottle. "Betty and I used to do _everything_ together. All our homework, all our shopping, all our cleaning, all our laundry, all our recitals, all our parties, all our meals. We never kept any secrets, except for birthdays. And bathrooms. We never had any awkwardness between us. She's helped me overcome my bullies and my claustrophobia and hemmed my pants so many times. I used to bring her chocolate when she felt sick and help her wash her clothes and be there for her to talk to when she thought you guys didn't care about us… and we've lost most of that closeness now."

"… Sorry. It's my fault. Everything is my fault. I shouldn't have messed up on my test when you guys were in the crocodile swamp."

"Alligators." Gary held the sprayed shirt out to him. "Whose is this, and where does it go?" Rosencrantz told him, and Gary dropped it in. Then he leaned back and blew at the dangling tassel of his graduation cap. "You didn't mean for this to happen. I don't want to make you feel bad. But I'm going through a hard time right now. I have been for three weeks. I love her. I love her with all my heart. She's my best friend. And I- and I cry sometimes, when I realize how close she and I almost came to dying when those gators were after us. But we didn't, and I will never stop being grateful for that. You got us out of there just in time, Rosebud."

"Should've been sooner," the pixie muttered, "and I wouldn't be s-stuck here either."

There wasn't a good way to respond to that. At least, not that Gary knew. He was fun and games. He was smiles and jokes. He was health and learning. Betty was the comforter, the healer. The one who saw the brightness in everyone, even if she only saw the darkness in herself. The one who didn't judge. He told as much to Rosencrantz.

"And I didn't just lose _her_ when H.P. had her memory wiped. Now, I- I've been having to keep secrets from her." Gary's fingers went up to the little grassy spikes in his hair. "I've actually had to… to… _lie_ to her. She can sense it, and she doesn't know what happened, and it makes her feel awful. Lying is wrong! A-and now I lie to my best friend five or six times a day, every single day, week upon _week_. Do you know how much that hurts both of us?"

Rosencrantz shut the lid of the washing machine and floated over to one of the dryers. It still had a minute left on its timer, so he settled himself on top. "Oh. Well. Um. You could try asking the Fairy Council if they'll wipe your memories too. You could do what she did. Quit and be upset. Maybe bribe Longwood or someone. They'll do it. The Fairy Council would be happy to do it. Then you wouldn't need to lie."

"I can't," Gary said, voice cracking down the center. "I can't quit any more than Kenny can. Neither of us has a family, or anywhere to live besides the little apartment Mr. Sanderson's been paying rent on for us ever since we were like, nine. We don't have any other source of income. We've lived our whole lives trying to do everything exactly right. Because if you guys lose interest in us, it's over. It's not like we could live up here in the cloudlands- there's not enough air for us to breathe for longer than a few hours in a row, and what are we supposed to do? Mr. Keight was right. Most of the pixies don't like us." He sighed. "No, we'll have to live on the streets. And I can't do that to Betty."

The dryer dinged. Rosencrantz hopped off. "Oh. Flappy won't help you?"

"Flappy's gone. He's sent us a few postcards and letters from Kansas and Vegas, but he has his parents now, and he's busy with the circus, and he doesn't need us anymore. Anyway, he's finally happy. We'd just drag him down. I just don't know what to do…"

"You could try to get her memories back from the Fairy Council," Rosencrantz said, folding up a white shirt and setting it in its own stack alongside a dozen others.

Gary did not move. And then he did, unfolding his legs and lifting his head. "You can do that?"

The little pixie shrugged. "Well, _you_ can't. You're Gary Cabrera: one of three humans adopted by a pixie. The Robes don't know what to think about you- just that they hate you because Sanderson broke the rules for you when he first took you in."

"Did he?"

"Yeah, only like twenty magical beings have ever adopted human kids before, and he told me about it. He used to be my mentor, and he still tells me about lots of things." Rosencrantz leaned his chin down to pin a shirt collar to his chest as he pressed the sleeves together. "The Council doesn't allow Pixies to have godchildren except in very special circumstances, like if there are no Fairies at all anywhere who can. They were really mad when they found your adoption papers, because they thought one of you would wish for Fairy World to be ruled by Pixies or something. Your appendixes are still locked up so no one with a wand can intertwine their magic with yours and directly grant your wishes and stuff."

Gary smiled thinly. "No offense, but… I was raised by and still work for Pixies, and _I_ don't want Fairy World to be ruled by Pixies."

"Yeah, no one really does," Rosencrantz agreed, drawing a pair of gray slacks from the dryer. As Gary came over, he handed a second pair up to him. "Not even we do, sometimes. Or sometimes we do. It just depends. Sometimes H.P. just gets annoyed that no one takes us as a serious threat and likes to remind everyone that he's important. Anyway, you'd probably have to steal Betty's memory capsule from the memory vault in the Fairy World Archives basement in Faeheim. But that place is so heavily guarded that you'd need some kind of way to teleport in there without using magic, and obviously you can't do that."

"Let me guess. The vault is lined with smoof and brownie spit?"

"Exactly. Since the Council don't like you, they might not listen if you try asking if you can have Betty's memories back, because they'd be happier if you forgot about magic. Still, they're not allowed to touch you at all because you're in our jurisdiction, like your little silver card says. I think. I can find out about that for sure, if you want."

"Silver card…" Gary pulled out his wallet and flipped through it for a moment. "You mean, this one?"

The dim laundromat lights reflected off the plastic - or whatever magical material it was made of - and cast a rainbow across Gary's shoe. Rosencrantz checked it over and nodded. "Yeah, your Pixie credit card. It's impossible for anyone to steal except in a really strong magic deadzone like Rio. And it has your ID chip in it that magical beings can taste in the air from like a whole building away. That means it says it's illegal for the Council to wipe your memories without the Head Pixie's permission, and says you're technically counted as godchildren. So, you're entitled to all the loopholes and conditions in Da Rules and everything that go along with that, except for the wishing thing. And, well, there's the part about how the Pixies are in charge of you instead of Jorgen and those other guys I don't know."

"Huh. I don't think Kenny ever got a Pixie credit card. He put it on his Gray Tuesday wishlist."

"Oh, that's because he's the guardian of the crossroads between the fourth and fifth planes of existence. Or fifth and sixth. I can never remember. But that gets him some really special stuff. Like, none of the Fairykind or any aliens in the entire universe are allowed to mess with him, except they might try if they don't want to follow the Quadrant Pact Rules that've been around since the Great Dawn times." Rosencrantz put his pointer finger against the roof of his mouth. "Shanderson shaid he put Kenny's chip in his retainer sho he would never put it down shomewhere and lose it, and it helps to shield hish body from shome magic."

Gary now had three pairs of pants and four shirts that Rosencrantz had handed to him dangling from his arms. Leaning an elbow against one of the dryers, he crossed his legs at the ankles and ran his fingers up and down the card. "Just to clarify, this thing lets me buy… whatever I want anywhere, right? Not just the grocery store and the clothing store I usually visit? This was never disabled after the plan with Flappy fell through?"

"I think so. It should work anywhere in this quadrant of the universe. Oh yeah, except for one place. You can't buy stuff with it on Anti-Pixie Isle, in Anti-Fairy World."

"Ah, because it's a deadzone."

"Yeah, and because they mostly don't have shops and don't use credit cards there. They only trade for stuff."

Gary tapped the piece of silver plastic against his knee. One of the clean socks fell from his elbow. "So if I wanted to, I could walk to the other side of the city where you guys have your grocery store, or your pixie-only sugar bar, and buy myself some candy right now."

"Sure can."

"And if I went to Burger World to hang out with Kenny, I could order some food there too."

"Yep."

"And if I really wanted to, I could go to another planet and buy myself some alien stuff. Video games. Snacks. Books. Clothes. Anything?"

"Well, you'd have to get there first, but yes."

"Huh, that's really-weally interesting! I'd forgotten it doesn't only work on Earth." The card went back into his wallet. The wallet then went into his pocket. Gary stood up and stretched his arms. This time, he was careful not to knock any of the laundry to the tiled floor. "Thanks for talking to me, Rosebud. It makes me feel a little better."

The pixie actually spared a wingbeat from his work to glance back at him. "Sure. Thanks for listening. I know a lot of things because whenever I'm not folding clothes I study this kind of stuff, but no one ever lets me prove it. They think I'm young and dumb, so they don't even listen. I study so hard. Maybe I'm not good with genie stuff, and I'm sorry about that, but I'm getting good at understanding how the company works. I think I know more than most pixies, actually, because they don't care what goes on in the other departments. I do. I know all of it, and I'm trying to learn how to do every job I can. One day I'll find something I'm good at. So… if you ever want to know things, come talk to me. I like to talk."

After he turned a pair of pants right-side out, Gary reached over and mussed the little pixie's hair. "Hey, I'm no expert, but Mr. Sanderson does let some things slip out. Hasn't there only been one pixie who never found a job he was good at?"

"… Me?"

"Other than you, silly-willy goosey-loosey."

Rosencrantz blinked behind his crooked shades. "Oh. You mean Longwood."

"Exactamundo! And he still became tip-top vice president, right? Maybe nothing else fits you because you're not looking in the right places. You could take over from him when he dies."

"I'll never be vice president. But…" The small pixie picked up a rumpled tie that had tangled itself around a shirt. "If wishes were for pixies, that would be my wish."

"Uh… That Mr. Longwood dies?"

Rosencrantz shrugged. "Well, maybe. I haven't worked out the details yet. I was thinking more like that Longwood and I would have to prove our skills in competition. I already know I'm smarter than he is, and Sanderson always said he was a big squeamish nymph when it comes to blood. I'm not a pacifist like him, so it doesn't matter if the competition is about brains or brawn, because I'd win either way."

Gary paused, the smile still plastered on his face. But it wasn't really in him to discourage anybody from achieving their goals. He swung his fist across his body like a scoop. "That's the spirit, friend! You'll just have to find the chance to show Mr. H.P. that you can do anything if you believe."

"I hope so," Rosencrantz said softly. He bundled two socks together. "I would do anything in the universe to prove I'm useful. Every pixie wants the Head to be proud of him."

They worked in silence for a few minutes more. Then heavy knuckles rapped against the window pane, nearly splintering the glass. "Hey, Cabrera! Longwood's coming this way, but I got here first. Let's roll, cadet."

"Absopositilutely! I'm right behind you, Mr. Faust. I know! I'll sing you the 'Sorry' song as we skim! Er, walk. Oh, isn't today _fabulicious?_ It tastes like the beginning of a whole new story!" Without bothering to cast the little pixie another glance, Gary tossed the last pair of underwear in Rosencrantz's general direction and sprinted outside to join him.

 **END ARC 1**


	31. ARC 2 - (26) That Was Then

_Summary:_ Jay Rhoswen disagrees with the view that Anti-Fairies are dumb animals. After moving to Fairy World, he teaches his wife's counterpart to read, and quickly finds himself falling head over heels.

 _Characters:_ Jay, Shylinda, Anti-Shylinda, Anti-Jay

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "First Things First" / "Stand Alone"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **26\. That Was Then** (Between the Sealing War and the Sacred Revolution)

 _Winter of the Blue Dawn - Spring of the Swooping Bats_

* * *

 _"Father?"_

 _"Yes, Foop? What is it?"_

 _"Where do Anti-Fairies come from?"_

 _"Ah, yes. Fetch that file from my desk, would you, lad?"_

* * *

 _Mistake Number 1_

No one should leave the bunker when the shooting stars are coming down. Least of all a child. And not even an Aos Sí child at that- not really. Not anymore. Not the first of the Sluagh to be born of Splitten parents. Not a child who spent more time beneath the surface of Jupiter than on its outsides. Every day, the shield around our settlement takes on a redder tinge, darkening from maroon to vibrant crimson as the war rages over our heads. Stars clink against the bubble and fall, piling in drifts behind murky plumes of fog.

Ma says the shield will hold forever, and she says it with such conviction that when you're in the room, you can't help but believe her. Father recites the same words as though pretending to be her, but he says it without meeting anyone's gaze. Sometimes he amends it by saying the Snobulacs will surely rescue us if our shield falls. I am less convinced. Not counting the stock, there are only fourteen of us in the settlement. All banished from Elphame when they lost their old forms, apart from me, who was born on this ruddy planet.

I don't want to die on it too.

The thought of leaving had long drifted in the back of my mind. But it only clicked, I think, when I caught myself measuring out two careful scoops of Morning Flakes into Anti-Jay's dish for breakfast. To think! I don't even see my food until it's been filtered out by desperate rationing as supplies strain. And my own Inspector counterpart, who lets me rub his ears and chases balls across the house and is a good sport when I push him too far just to watch him regenerate, continues to eat seemingly unaware.

No. No longer. Each day the shield reddens, threatening to split beneath the barrage of shooting stars. Split like my parents did- like all in this settlement did. All apart from me, the drake born broken instead of as a being to break.

The dish goes on the floor, and the flakes back in the cupboard. I hold my elbows as I stare down at Anti-Jay crouching on the dirty ground while he eats. He's the first I tell. The only one I tell.

"I'm leaving for the Earth colony tonight."

* * *

 _Mistake Number 2_

I didn't change my mind.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 3_

I disgust them. Here they are trying to fight a war, and a Sluagh drake stands patiently under the overhang at the supply station with nothing on his person except his chisel and his skirt and a handful of smooth stones.

Although I've never seen one beyond the bedtime stories, I know who these folks are. They are kin, of a sort; I would have been one of them had my parents not Split apart. They consider my broken self beneath them, and that's why they're intrigued.

Moments ago, the amber one lowered their trident and approached the supply station. They were twice my size in every direction- a hulking, six-armed brute with feathery ankles and a whipping tail that ended in a tuft. Six eyes. Two in the proper place, one on each cheek, and two on the forehead that seemed to blink sideways from their orientation. The tall ears flattened as the furry creature lowered their face to my level to leer with their lips drawn back from their fangs. Every long finger ended with a white claw. Naked apart from the skirt bound about the waist by a coil of rope. My parents described them exactly right in those bedtime stories, though of course… I'm sure it was easy, since they were once Aos Sí too.

I stared straight at their middle set of eyes, refusing to step back. I disgusted them, yes. And I would not play their game.

"I need a ride off this planet," I said.

"You are broken," was the reply, strangely melodic to my ears. I had been anticipating a low rumble. Still, I did not betray myself with anything more than a blink.

"I am not broken. I am as I am."

The trident was placed in front of my nose, and I set my teeth. "You don't have a starpiece," they said.

"I have this." I unclipped my star-tipped chisel from my hip and held it out. It was no longer or wider than any of the star-tipped points that lined the trident. A dagger of sorts. We looked at it together for a long time, and then they picked me up in two of their arms, covered their head with another, and charged across the field as the stars rained down.

That was some time ago. Now I'm sitting in the base camp, tied by my ankle with thick leather to a metal spike in the ground. I am alone and very cold.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 4_

My bond was loosened after the first week, but none of the Aos Sí will let me out of their sight. I am servant and pet, amusing for my small size and two skinny arms. The blue and the green talk over my head as though I'm too stupid to understand. In their defense… sometimes I don't. Many of their words are unfamiliar to me. When I attempt to communicate, they laugh at my accent. The constant stutter, I'm sure, doesn't help matters. I could be more than this if they would only give me the chance. If they just didn't treat me like a pet.

The days blur together. I don't eat much anymore. I feel guilty for being jealous of Anti-Jay's breakfast that day long ago. For what it's worth, I would trade what little food I have for freedom now.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 5_

I don't know how I feel about what I just saw.

An argument broke out between Amber and Red. Though I didn't catch most of it, I imagine it has something to do with the decision to retreat from Jupiter and risk being followed by our enemies, or to remain and fight even if it seals our fate. The entirety of Elphame has been lost. Its people captured or dead. Queen Ercel and King Christsonday have fallen. Nuada Airgetlám brought to his knees at Cath Maige Tuired. I can hardly fathom the thought. Only random colonies of exiled Splitten, like my old settlement, and a few encampments of Aos Sí soldiers remain untouched now. The Boudacians and the Rhymepyes are moving forward, with the Fomorians and even the Molpa-Pel themselves hot on their heels.

I sorted out that much, though who is backing which opinion remained unclear from my position behind the cooking pot with Yellow. Either way, Red was angry. A duel broke out between them, of clashing weapons, and Amber speared Red in the side. In response, Red used their trident to fling Amber into the sky like a ladle lifting soup. Amber flew up. And up. And when they fell, still fumbling with their shimmering wings, Red slammed Amber with three fists so they flew back and hit the cloudstone wall on my left. A solid thud and sickening crunch of wings and bone. They slid down.

With the others, I scuttled back as Red approached, the enormous trident lifted with its star-capped points prepared to stab down at Amber's throat. The downward motion was made unhesitatingly. I found myself too fearful to close my eyes.

And Amber Split.

It happened in an instant. A blur of golden Guide feathers, iridescent Elector wings, and blue Inspector fur. Six arms down to two apiece. Six eyes down to two apiece. Red's trident crashed down between them, missing their bodies entirely. Amber's own trident hit the dirt and shattered into thirds.

They, each of those beings who had once been Amber, sat there for many minutes, trembling with arms wrapped around their heads. It saved their shared life to divide their soul, but at what cost? Our tiny force of seven will be severely crippled by the loss of one of its fine warriors. On top of that, where can someone who's Split expect to go?

* * *

 _Mistake Number 6_

Amber's shameful Splitting is determined a greater punishment than death, so Red spares their life. As Guidance counterparts are prone to doing, Drake Amber takes off in a random direction in an instant, and no feather either white or gold is seen again. Elector-Amber is far too proud to cry, but her anti-self is not. The poor creature wails and paces back and forth until her blue hands and feet bleed streaks of green across the ground.

"You can't undo it," I've told her, often shouting just to hear myself over how tightly I've plugged my ears. "You Split. The three of you agreed! My parents could never reform themselves. I was born this way, and I've gotten on fine. You are as you are, now and forever."

Elector-Amber was supposed to help me prepare the evening meal, but she watched instead, hugging her sides. After an age of it, she said, "How do you live this way, Jay? Being alone makes me feel naked. Never have I felt this exposed, and I say that as someone who wears nothing but a thin cloth between her legs."

"I don't know," was my response. "I just don't worry about things. My life is my journey. It leads where it will. All I do is keep pushing on."

"Your wings are more like a bird's than an insect's," she said, awfully puzzled. "But they're not gold, nor is your skin feathered with white. Are you the Elector counterpart? Or are you the Guide?"

"My father looks the same way. Privately, I don't think he evenly split from his Guidance half; he always was the pious sort, and perhaps it's a gene which is connected to the feathers. You may notice I don't have a crown either. This is just the way I am. I don't question it."

"That's ridonculous. About the piety gene, I mean."

"It's the only answer I have." My words may have come out rather defensively. I touched my wings with my hand. "I never saw my own Guidance counterpart either- only my anti-self. Not that that seems to be uncommon. Those Guides are a fickle, cowardly lot. For all I know, she doesn't even exist in separate form. Perhaps she is part of me, Elector-Jay and Dame Jay still fused into one… the two of us, waiting for an Inspector to make us whole in a way we never were."

"A child born of Venus with feathered wings," Amber muttered. "We may as well call you a cherub and see about naming the other Elector subspecies too."

"Jupiter."

"Same difference. Fringe colonies of Sluagh eking out a poor living on planets that can't grow food. They're more of a cost to Elphame's merchant ships than an asset, both of them." She rubbed the areas where, in her mind, her other arms used to be. "About Splitting. Does it stop hurting in time?"

"Are you in pain?"

"Not physically."

I shrugged. "I don't know the feeling of missing part of myself. My relation with the Anti-Jay was never intimate. I did not cuddle him, did not feel in sync with him, did not look at him the way you look at your Inspector counterpart, as though you know what's going on inside her head and it upsets you that you can't give her what she wants. I fed him. I pet his ears. We played. Mostly I teased him so he would regenerate. He slept on my floor." As I stirred the soup in the cauldron, I shrugged a second time, with both my shoulders and my feathered wings. "I was born of Splitten parents. This is the life I know."

"Born of Splitten parents." She said it like a curse. "I'd sooner die than procreate in this lowly state." Finally, she released her torso and stretched her palm towards the heap of dry kindling between our feet. "This broken form is limited and disgusting. I can't even use magic anymore."

"Yes you can. Bring me what's left of your trident. I'll show you."

I finished preparing our meal and served it to our masters, and then waited with my own bowl of soup for Amber to return. She did, bearing the three broken points of her trident. I took two and handed one back to her.

"Now, listen to me. When you were Aos Sí, you had enough power in your core to wield magic at your own will. Now that you have Split, the energy inside you has has been reduced to a third each. That's not enough to do much of anything. You'll need to gather a boost. There is magic in the air around you. You can pull it from the energy field, but you'll need a medium to do it. The star on the end of this point should work well enough. Give it a wave. The wiggling attracts the magic particles from the field."

Amber did so, clumsily at first, but within two hours she had caught on fairly well, and could levitate the clay dishes as often as she broke them. "Did you invent this method?" she asked me, flabbergasted.

"My parents taught me how it works, but I'm sure someone else taught them. Word gets around among the Sluagh. We aren't as strong as Unsplitten Aos Sí, so we need to be creative." I took up my chisel and several nice stones from the ground. "Do you have a name? It seems silly to keep thinking of you as 'Amber' when you've lost your colored fur."

"If I share my name, you'll get attached."

"You know mine," I said, refusing to drop my stare. "And I amend my statement. You didn't lose all your color. It just went into your eyes." Though not into her anti-self, apparently. _Her_ eyes were bitter and red.

She hesitated. "Shylinda Coppertalon."

"Jay Rhoswen," I offered, holding out my hand. "Welcome to the Splitten life."

"You know I already knew your name," she scoffed, refusing my gesture. I lowered it with a click of my tongue.

"Just wanted to be a part of things. I don't want to be forgotten."

* * *

 _Mistake Number 7_

Shylinda had wanted to remain on Jupiter to fight. But Split, she had no bartering power in the eyes of Red. We retreated from the planet, moving sunward. The rocky, fiery Earth greeted us, but fortunately we did not stop there. We turned instead to the cloudland colony of Fairy World that only recently had sprung up around it.

Though Red had argued we turn over the Jupiter settlement to our foes and fall back to Earth, I knew they didn't consider the decision a pleasant one. The Earth colony welcomed all willing hands. Aos Sí and Sluagh mingled freely with one another like equals, even though one could tell from their mannerisms each considered themself superior to the other kind. Red considered this rubbing of shoulders to be a disgusting insult; a sign of the end for the proud Aos Sí race.

Last night, Shylinda woke me with a rough hand on my mouth. She pointed out how easy it would be to lose ourselves in the crowd of our fellows, my feathered wings notwithstanding, and I agreed. With Anti-Shylinda bounding after us, Shylinda and I made our escape into the new colony.

Red felt obligated to hurl their spear after us, but aimed purposefully short, I think.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 8_

I am as I am, and in Fairy World I am welcomed for it.

The colony is wonderful. I may go down in history as the first of the Sluagh to be born as such, but in the Earth colony, I quickly find that I am not the only one. For the first time in my life, I am able to cling to that common thread. Others have shared my experience, my growing up without ever understanding the affectionate way they speak of their lost counterparts, like they might speak of a lost arm or a valued pet. Never feeling what they felt, never knowing why they felt they were missing something when I grew up feeling whole. No longer am I an outcast among outcasts. An oddball in a settlement where being Sluagh went hand in hand with having Split in all cases except my own.

I'm a part of something larger now, something I understand. And I know this is where I was supposed to come. I escort Shylinda delicately by her elbow as we seek out a place where we can stay. At one point she turns to me, holding Anti-Shylinda cradled in her other arm, and we simply grin. This is right. I'm in the same place as someone with whom I am destined to be.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 9_

A family has welcomed us into their home. We earn our keep with pleasant chores, enjoying it far more than we did those many months we spent in the soldiers' company. When they fell back, the fighting from Jupiter moved with them. But that is on the far side of the cloudlands, and we all go about our work and act as though the war that devastated Elphame and could ravage her colonies too is nonexistent.

My courtship with Shylinda has become official. It would be impractical for her to introduce me to her parents, and I could say the same thing on my end. We have each other now, and that will be enough. If all goes well, we should be married within the season.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 10_

I've formed a special kinship with Falak, my only drakian contact within the Sunbeam household. Many nights have passed with he and I engaged in a game of Fidchell while Anti-Shylinda naps on my lap in a blue and black bundle of fur. He's bright and witty, and privately Shylinda fancies him, but I don't mind it. He keeps journals with a chisel and stones as I do, and has such a passion for research.

Falak's critiques towards society are enthralling. The Aos Sí will fall within the millennium, he's quite sure. Either those who have survived this long will be driven into such stress that they Split, or they will die. The flaw in Aos Sí society, Falak insists, is that they were stuck in their ways. They merely existed, and were content to exist, for hundreds of millennia in the cosmos. They wore their skirts, but their ability to create ended there. They developed no armor. They did not write. They built no buildings. They created no art. They will disappear someday and leave no mark of their existence at all. No mark, except the Sluagh.

It was only after Splitting- only then were their minds free to breathe, to think, to _marvel_ at the wonders of the universe. It was the Sluagh who taught the Aos Sí how to build their bunkers and their weapons, how to create poetry and song, how to turn from hunting and gathering to farming and tending herds. It was the Sluagh who built the cloudlands!

And I am proud of us. I am proud of my culture and my people. I am proud to live in Fairy World. Why… I am proud to be a Fairy!

* * *

 _Mistake Number 11_

Shylinda and I were married today in a simple affair. We have not known each other long, and under the traditions of the Aos Sí, a union this soon may have been unthinkable. Aos Sí courtship is long and patient, for one might argue that there are "three" beings within their heads who must agree to be satisfied with a partner. But that is not the way Fairies do it, I think. Fairies are so much simpler, and we feel deeply. At the very least, slow isn't the way _I_ do things.

The quiet life in the Jupiter settlement, never knowing the tender friendship of a damsel near my age, was not for me. Jay Rhoswen may have an incurable stutter, but it is no sign that he is weak or will be pushed around. Jay Rhoswen controls his own fate. His life is proceeding on a goodly road, with a roof over his head, work at his fingertips, a damsel in his arm… and perhaps a baby on the way within another year or two. No, nothing can catch him off guard.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 12_

Falak says the Aos Sí were not researchers. Written language is new to the universe, given to Fairies by the Snobulacs. There is so much to learn, and nothing yet recorded. He and I are going into the research business together, and what better to study than the nature of ourselves? The Aos Sí will be gone soon enough, and the Fairies will receive their just rewards.

Yes, Fairies, for we are calling ourselves that now. It rings out so much neater and stronger than 'Sluagh', and it is those with the chisel who carve out both history and future. There are still so few who understand written language. Snobbish, fewer still. Falak and I are marking the path. We will study and converse, and meet with many other like-minded folk, and as the Aos Sí fade out of memory, we will record all we know.

* * *

Jay Rhoswen

Mid-Summer, 11, Year of the Torn Planets

On the Nature of the Anti-Fairy

 _A study of the being who is said to represent the Introspection of the soul will now commence. "Inspector counterparts" will hereafter be referred to as "Anti-Fairies". Falak Sunbeam is assisting me on the project. Our goal is to determine the mental capacity and limitations of a small selection of Anti-Fairies, with the hope that our discoveries can be applied in the present day and replicated in time when a wider selection of Anti-Fairies is readily available._

 _Subject 1 is strong and patient._

 _Subject 2 is young and sturdy._

 _Subject 3 is gentle and curious._

 _Subject 4 is lithe and friendly._

 _Subject 5 is distant and watchful._

 _It has long been common knowledge that Anti-Fairies are capable of following simple commands and can be housebroken. Over the coming months, we will push them further by testing their facial recognition abilities, examining their play, comparing their development to that of Fairy children. An attempt will also be made to teach them basic language skills._

* * *

 _Mistake Number 14_

The mirror I was using to test Anti-Fairy facial recognition broke in my hands. Shortly after that, I was dog-piled by the subjects and sustained serious injuries to my neck and head. Only a week in and it seems I will already have to take some time off from the project. I am being relocated upstairs to rest.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 15_

Shylinda has been a great comfort in this time. I may not understand the affectionate feelings those who have Split express towards their counterparts, but I do understand my feelings for my wife. She is caring and passionate, and strict to reprimand me when I exert myself in a way the healer warned against. I don't know what I would do without her.

She made me a covering that I can wear on my upper body, modeled after cloth she once saw upon a Snobulac back when she was still Aos Sí. It is white and very long. Down its front are several buttons in a vertical line that hold it closed. Sleeves cover my arms to my wrists. She calls it a coat. And she complained enormously about the difficulty involved in sewing it with two hands instead of six, but she means it in jest and I find her frustration and perseverance endearing.

I imagine that covering my chest with it will take some getting used to. But, the fabric is strong and slippery, and ought to protect my soft skin from Anti-Fairy claws when I return to the lab.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 16_

I returned downstairs to work this morning, grateful to make myself useful again after those thirteen days in bed. Falak has progressed without me, and he takes such quick and careful notes. I am grateful to have him for a partner.

After the event with the mirror, Falak and I decided to devote ourselves to each anti-fairy one by one, as opposed to placing all of them in the study room at the same time. This will introduce a new variable into our research, but there's little that can be done about it.

Today, I was in the midst of going over the Snobbish alphabet aloud when Anti-Shylinda suddenly rose to her hind legs and stayed there. Included below is an excerpt of Sunbeam's notes for the session:

Rhoswen: _"'H' is the letter that b-begins the word 'hair'. You are Anti-Fairies, with hard s-scales on your backs that are lined with b-blue hair. We sometimes c-call this hair 'fur'. Fur begins with the l-letter 'F'."_

[At this point, Subject 4 rose quite suddenly on her hind legs, without any prompting. As time passed and she did not sit down again, Rhoswen and I took notice. Sitting on the floor, his eyes were not far from her exposed reproductive parts. This appeared to cause him some embarrassment, which I imagine was further deepened by the fact that he recently became a married drake; married, in fact, to Subject 4's own Fairy counterpart.]

Rhoswen: _"Um."_

[Rhoswen stood, stripped off his white coat, and took two quick steps towards Subject 4. She drew back her head, but made no move with her feet to retreat, nor did she sit down.]

Rhoswen: _"I-if you're going to stand up like th-that, Anti-Shylinda, we're, u-um, going to have t-to make you d-d-decent."_

[Subject 4 made an obvious attempt to repeat the word "decent". She did this three times.]

Rhoswen: _"That's right. A-arm out. Good, and the o-other one."_

[Rhoswen awkwardly tried to fit her wings through the holes at the rear of his coat. Finally he succeeded, and pushed the four buttons at the front through their proper holes. When this was finished, he stepped back and clasped his hands.]

Rhoswen: _"L-let's take a l-look at you."_

[Subject 4 merely stared at his eyes. Though she wobbled, she appeared content to continue standing. She was shorter standing that way than both Rhoswen and myself. Rhoswen then spread his arms.]

Rhoswen: _"Ah, j-jingles. You look p-perfectly fritzy in that, my d-darling."_

[Subject 4 made another attempt to pronounce the word "decent".]

* * *

 _Mistake Number 17_

Anti-Shylinda has proven to be the most fascinating subject on the premises; not that I expected anything less of my dear wife's counterpart. I've come across many Anti-Fairies in my life, particularly since settling in Fairy World, but never have I met one who can move their tongue to pronounce full words and speak. Let alone one who can string those sounds into sentences. She is picking up language quickly. Her speech is slow, her comments are short, but her pronunciation is improving. At this point it is still uncertain if she will ever speak the language fluently.

Regardless, I've found Anti-Shylinda to be quite intelligent, and her conversation increasingly stimulating. So far, she has changed the subject during a session to tell me when she wishes to eat, asked what my favorite food is, asked what Falak's favorite food is, requested something to drink, and asked me for my name. As I headed upstairs one night, I told her that I was on dinner duty that evening. Upon my return the following day, she asked me, "Good food was made? You make?"

Once, she even apologized unprompted when she knocked her dish to the floor and spilled her water. I don't believe either Falak or I taught her that; she merely picked it up from observing us speaking it to one another.

* * *

F. Sunbeam-

Rhoswen appears to have taken a keen interest in Subject 4. I have noticed he is far more patient with her than the others, and more enthusiastic with his praise. I have asked him privately to make the attempt to remain consistent, and he always agrees, but my advice flies out the other ear the moment he steps into the same room as her. It seems our study has met with an unexpected variable.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 18_

Anti-Shylinda was very agitated yesterday. All the subjects were. Nothing the day before appeared out of the ordinary, and today's schedule was not altered either, and yet now that it's the fourteenth day of the month, they have simply settled down again.

Regardless, yesterday the subjects were so distressed that they were impossible to work with. Even upstairs, we could hear them howling and scratching at the basement door. There are only two damsels in the group of them, and I could recognize Anti-Shylinda's cries above them all. Worse is that she has learned enough Snobbish to voice her pleas as words. Her desperate begging tore me apart. She wailed my name more than a few times.

I spent most of the day at the bottom of the steps, speaking calmly to her through the door.

* * *

F. Sunbeam _-_

To my growing alarm, Rhoswen's interest in our study is waning. Last night, I caught him visiting Subject 4 after-hours to bring her a sugary treat. This is definitely an unexpected variable.

Today was filled with chaos.

Just before noon, Subject 4 underwent a dramatic change. Rhoswen was working with her while I observed as normal, when he realized that her fur was turning yellow. It was an amber of sorts, not too pale but not too orange.

This yellow started in her palms and spun its way up her arms in twisted spirals. Within five minutes, she had completely turned the color of honey. At this point, she charged towards the basement door and slammed into it with enough force to splinter the wood. We ran after her, but by the time we reached the top of the stairs, she had leaped onto the dining table and escaped through the open kitchen window.

Pursuing her by wing for two hours in a near-straight line, leaving the village of Faeheim behind in favor of the open cloudlands, we eventually caught up to her when she encountered and proceeded to mate with a blue anti-fairy whom I mistook to be wild.

Rhoswen appeared very distressed by the event and retreated a considerable distance. Probing him later, I was able to determine that he and his wife, Shylinda, had officially consummated their marriage three months ago to the day. Anti-Shylinda, then, appears to have been driven by universal forces which we do not understand to seek out the Anti-Jay.

Further details are unclear at this time, as the subject of anti-fairy courtship is not a well-researched field. However, I did take notice that Rhoswen's eyes are blue, and Shylinda's are the same golden color that her counterpart took on when the urge to mate overwhelmed her. When they had finished, she faded into blue again, leaving golden marks across Anti-Jay wherever they had touched. It was easier to tell before her gold faded, but he left blue streaks across her as well. Time will tell if such branding marks will wear off.

A fascinating event, this mating ritual. I have dubbed it "the honey-lock", after Anti-Shylinda's color and the way she zeroed so reliably upon Anti-Jay's location despite their massive distance.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 19_

I asked Anti-Shylinda to give her perspective on the events of yesterday's honey-locking. She struggled to do so, merely citing "her need" to find my anti-self.

To questions about how she determined his location and whether it bothered her that she had never met my counterpart before, she was unresponsive. I imagine she didn't know the answers herself. However, when she did speak, she was cooperative and without shame. I respect her greatly for that.

* * *

F. Sunbeam-

Rhoswen will speak of nothing to me but how bothered he is that Anti-Shylinda and Anti-Jay, and presumably all the Anti-Fairies, are forcibly driven to mate in reflection to what their counterparts do. It took three hours to assure him that making love to his wife is only natural, and he should not have to feel weighed down by guilt in doing so.

He finally stopped speaking to me. I suspect he is not convinced. He is prone to imprinting his own values and feelings upon the Anti-Fairies, and he constantly insists on viewing the world as though through an anti-fairy's eyes. Rhoswen so values physical touch and the intimacy that goes along with it, that just the thought of making love to a stranger against his will quite disgusts him.

I don't know what to say to him.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 20_

While Falak and I discussed the honey-lock with Anti-Shylinda, my Shylinda and Katy Sunbeam rounded up the Anti-Jay. I can't put it into words, but his very presence filled me with such waves of unease that I excused myself quickly.

Out of sheer curiosity, Falak penned Anti-Jay and Anti-Shylinda together for the afternoon, and stayed up late until his candles burned low to observe them. According to his notes, they hardly acknowledged one another's presence.

Reading this, I regret going upstairs. Anti-Shylinda had something to say about the matter; I know it. What concerns me most about the "hardly acknowledged" comment is the implication that she did not like him. I find the idea of her being locked up in close quarters with a strange drake she doesn't like most upsetting indeed.

* * *

F. Sunbeam _-_

Days have passed, and Rhoswen is still pestering Anti-Shylinda with endless questions about the honey-lock. He finally stopped when she stated that she finds him "Amusing".

* * *

 _Mistake Number 21_

We took measurements some time ago, and Shylinda has finally stitched Anti-Shylinda a skirt of her own. It's soft amber, like the color she turned when she honey-locked before. She has taken to standing quite well, although it would seem she prefers flying to walking. Her legs bend in an odd way and her feet are designed for hanging from tree branches, not for supporting her weight, so that is understandable.

Between the skirt, her steadying walk, her straight back, and her gentle conversation, you can hardly tell she's an Anti-Fairy at all. She's blue, and she has lovely tall ears which protrude from her black hair and swivel when she tracks a sound. That's really the only difference between her and us.

* * *

F. Sunbeam-

Anti-Jay's and Anti-Shylinda's honey-lock activated again tonight. Rhoswen has taken some comfort in the knowledge that they have spent the past several days in one another's company, and are not as much strangers as they were before.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 22_

I've spent many months in Anti-Shylinda's company now. She tells me of her insights, and she even invents stories and can recall them days later. She never confuses them with her actual past, and is very difficult to catch off guard with a logic puzzle or double statement. She has learned to use facial expressions to communicate. She smiles and frowns appropriately. She laughs when I tell her jokes. She tells her own jokes, and while the first ones made sense only to her, she has picked up quickly. What a fascinating creature.

* * *

F. Sunbeam-

I've recruited my wife, children, and Shylinda to help me continue educating the other Anti-Fairies in our care. "Other" excludes Anti-Shylinda, for Rhoswen's pleasure in working with her is infallible. I can hardly fault him. She progressed so rapidly, and he is so easily excited, always about enjoying life to the fullest. Working to bring the other Anti-Fairies up to Anti-Shylinda's level is far more dull than squeezing everything he can out of her while he has the chance.

I continue to take notes as we work on our project, simply to keep a record for the generations to come. All of this research should be taken lightly, replicated, and validated at a future time when researchers and subjects are more readily available.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 23_

Shylinda, Falak, Katy, and I took Anti-Shylinda outside today to explore the town. We ended our tour with a picnic lunch on the hillside. That attracted many stares. She presented herself as though she were any other Fairy, delicately holding things in her claws and politely requesting items such as butter and a knife to spread it with. She asked for butter, and she spread it on her own!

All those "common knowledge" beliefs that Anti-Fairies are simple creatures born and bred to be guards and pets are dissolving between my fingers. I welcome it. Anti-Fairies are intelligent. In fact, I don't consider them less intelligent than Fairies at all. They've simply been trodden down in the dirt, never reinforced for speaking, and punished for expressing their own thoughts.

Anti-Shylinda is level-headed regardless of that. She offers forgiveness easily, and doesn't spite me for the mistaken beliefs of my past. She is creative. While writing with a chisel is still a bit of a struggle given her claws and flaky patience, she is always willing to talk and she treats me kindly, like a friend. She is the purest soul. The basement is not the cleanest part of the house, and bugs and spiders frequently wander in. They don't bother her. The other Anti-Fairies will chase them for food or sport, but Anti-Shylinda simply takes them in her hand and lifts them to the window. She would never hurt any creature except to put it out of its misery.

Anti-Fairies are no different from Fairies. They simply have their own ways of living- their ears, their feet… they have a sort of culture between them.

But they should not be treated as less than us. I want everyone to realize that. This is what I am a researcher for.

* * *

F. Sunbeam-

Today I confronted Rhoswen and suggested we bring our project to a close and release the Anti-Fairies. We have already replaced doors and even walls multiple times as a result of honey-lock excitement; its powers far exceed our own, on level with what the Aos Sí exercise, I should think. It simply seems impractical to keep the Antis in the basement when our research has gone so… awry. I would like to return the basement to its former use as storage space. So much junk has piled around upstairs, it's getting noticeably difficult to move. In addition, he has a baby on the way to think about now.

Rhoswen was vehemently opposed to the idea. He insists that Anti-Shylinda is the brightest Anti-Fairy in the universe, and we cannot simply turn her out like "the common variety". He is still taking constant notes where she is concerned, but has little interest in formatting them properly for a research paper, or in following the necessary proceedings to limit any variables.

He spends every spare moment of his time down there. Anti-Shylinda is all he talks about, when he's around to talk to us at all. My concern for his well-being steepens every day. I don't think his wife disagrees with me.

I am going to need to invent a strong drink.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 24_

The mind is a beautiful thing. Anti-Shylinda has bloomed from the freshly-Split, whining animal that I first knew her as to a charming damsel capable of engaging in witty banter while perched on the end of a table with her legs crossed and a glass of juice balanced delicately between her fingertips. She is permitted to move freely about the house, and has been spending increasing amounts of time upstairs nowadays. She fetches her own rainwater from the well to wash with, and bathes behind a closed door easily and without any assistance. She eats meals with us at the table, following the conversation without any struggle and even supplying her own opinions when appropriate.

It's so beautiful to me, that such a ragged and unloved creature has turned into a sleek and shiny damsel with bright eyes and a kindly soul. She often turns to me when conversation lulls and places a soft hand on the back of my wrist. Staring into my face, she tells me, "Thank you". I simply melt into my lab coat when she does, because I am appreciated, and I have changed her life amazingly, and she truly means it when she says she is grateful. She's so delicate and gentle and endlessly supportive about all of my silly ideas.

Yes, her mind is a dangerously beautiful thing. _She_ is a dangerously beautiful thing. This creature I am forced to dance around, forbidden by ancient laws to touch like an equal. No one else can urge me to back down when in my pride I trick myself into thinking I am right. In front of Anti-Shylinda, I am not the stubborn fighter all others have come to know me as. She makes me shy, constantly tucking my hair behind my ears and dropping my gaze to the ground, always working with my chisel just to quiet the constant longing of my hands to reach out and hold her…

I suppose I shouldn't be having these thoughts about a damsel who isn't my wife. No, perhaps not. But as long as they remain thoughts, I don't see the harm.

* * *

F. Sunbeam-

Rhoswen and Shylinda are in another shouting match upstairs. The words are unclear, but we all know what the topic of discussion is. Anti-Shylinda herself sits in her favorite chair with her legs crossed and arms folded, occasionally fidgeting with the folds of her skirts. We all pretend to continue working, connected by our shared guilt of knowing that we aren't.

I wasn't expecting to see the day when studying the life of my work partner is more fascinating to me than the original project at hand.

* * *

 _Mistake Number 25_

Cold, dark, wet basements lit only in one corner by the stubby remains of a candle are not very pleasant places for most people. I don't like to worry about things like that. Events will happen regardless of where you are, and tender emotions conquer all.

Perhaps I really am only half an Elector, and half of me is my Guidance self. Perhaps it's not true, for law of parsimony would suggest such a theory is ridiculous, but… oh, dust, if it were true, it would make so much sense. An Elector and a Guide seeking out an Inspector who did not grow up with them like a brother…

In that instant when our lips touched, I understood all of it. I knew what it meant to Split, to be stripped of something - someone - that was always meant to belong to you. I knew that for the rest of my life, as long as I lived, I would not be content with being broken as I am.

Because in that instant, I felt _whole_.

* * *

Falak Sunbeam the Younger

Early Spring, 8, Year of the Swooping Bats

On the Nature of Rhoswen Syndrome

[Shylinda Coppertalon stormed up the stairs from the basement, with Jay Rhoswen tagging after her. As they reached the top, he grabbed her hand and spun her around. Neither of them appeared to notice me.]

Rhoswen: _"D-Dear, it's not what you th-th-think. I badly s-startled [Anti-Shylinda] and she went to b-bite me, so I had to i-intercept."_

Coppertalon: _"With your mouth, I see."_

[Rhoswen released her and yanked instead at the lapels of his coat. He squared his shoulders.]

Rhoswen: _"My hands were b-b-busy."_

Coppertalon: _"Believe me, I saw. You were feeling her up."_

[Rhoswen took Coppertalon's forearms and pushed her against the stairway wall.]

Rhoswen: _"I was holding her b-b-back, dear. Her t-teeth could have s-sunk into my th-throat any s-second I s-stopped."_

[Coppertalon wrenched herself from his grip and made the attempt to climb the last stair. Rhoswen fixed her in place by her shoulders instead.]

Coppertalon: _"I hate you."_

[Rhoswen's tone softened. He began to press kisses along her neck.]

Rhoswen: _"You don't h-hate me. I l-love you, Shylinda d-dear."_

[Coppertalon squirmed against Rhoswen's grip.]

Coppertalon: _"You're a disgusting, vile creep."_

[Rhoswen stopped kissing her neck and briefly kissed her lips.]

Rhoswen _: "Maybe s-so, but th-that's why you ad-d-dore me. What was it you s-said when we were courting? 'W-who would want to p-procreate with me in this l-lowly state?' Y-yes. And what did I s-say in response t-to that?"_

Coppertalon: _"'I would'_ … _"_

Rhoswen: _"Mmhm. I l-love you."_

Coppertalon: _"Get off me, you serpent."_

[Coppertalon succeeded in shoving him off. She climbed the last step and grabbed her wand from the kitchen table. She brandished its star-capped end in Rhoswen's direction. Rhoswen folded his wings with a rustle and stayed quietly on the stairs, his palms flat against his chest.]

Coppertalon: _"I know what I saw down there, Jay. Consider the two of us split. I don't want you touching me again."_

Rhoswen: _"You're the o-one who wanted this b-baby, and_ now _you're l-leaving me?"_

[Coppertalon hesitated]

Coppertalon: _"I mean it. I'm leaving. You disgust me."_

Rhoswen: _"Don't be r-ridiculous. You'll be on the s-streets without me. The whole v-village knows you're m-mine, and no one will m-m-marry another drake's d-damsel."_

Coppertalon: _"I don't need to be married to send your precious Anti-Shylinda off honey-locking to the far side of the cloudlands."_

Rhoswen: _"Don't you d-dare, woman. She d-doesn't want that."_

[Coppertalon stepped closer to the stairs, still holding out the wand.]

Coppertalon: _"She wants you?"_

Rhoswen: _"She m-might."_

Coppertalon: _"She's an Anti-Fairy."_

Rhoswen: _"Sh-she's a person."_

Coppertalon: _"I'm a person!"_

[Pause]

Coppertalon: _"Jay, you're two months pregnant. Who gave you that baby?"_

Rhoswen: _"Y-you did, Shylinda- d-don't be absurd."_

Coppertalon: _"If you were to swear it on your dust, are you sure?"_

Rhoswen: _"A-Anti-Shylinda couldn't imp-p-pregnate me if she wanted t-to. F-Fairy and Anti-Fairy r-reproductive parts don't m-match up."_

Coppertalon: _"The truth comes out."_

Rhoswen: _"Shylinda, I d-didn't mean it like th-that!"_

[Pause]

Rhoswen: _"P-please give us some p-privacy, Falak. I know y-you're watching."_

* * *

 _Mistake Number 26_

Oh, dust.

I shouldn't have kissed Anti-Shylinda. Even though thoughts of her haunt my mind on a frequent basis, it's easier not to want her when she's downstairs and I'm up here. It's when we're in the same room that I am pulled towards her. Or am I only telling myself that in the foolish vein of hope that if I believe it hard enough, it will come true? That my wanting for her will disappear? I want her as I've never wanted any creature before.

I've tossed and turned for hours, or minutes, but either way it feels like weeks. It could be the baby keeping me up, but I don't think it is. A deep, heavy hole has settled in my chest. Scratching with my fingernails only turns my pale skin red, and does nothing to quell the emptiness inside.

It's so difficult to keep living, pretending that I'm not broken. I haven't lost something as simple as a wing. No, that would be easy to bounce back from. If I lost both wings, both arms, both my legs, and my tongue, and was left to live out my days silent and unmoving, that would be easy to bounce back from.

I lost something I wasn't supposed to lose, long before I was born. Our people were never meant to Split into Sluagh. All the buildings, all the languages, all the art and clothing and creativity… we each pour our soul into those things, into that desire to always move forward, because we are afraid to look back. We don't want to remember. Our minds force us not to remember.

Drive away your counterparts. The Guides are brilliant enough to flee the first chance they get. Drive away your counterparts. We all know what good fun it is to kill our own anti-selves and watch them reform from smoke, never truly hurt or holding a grudge. We don't even question why we are drawn to kill them. Why we are DRAWN to them. 'Drawn to kill'; what a joke, Finella. Yes, the Finella reflex will go down in history under that name, Electors drawn to murder their Inspectors, without any regard for the phenomenon's origin.

Because we are afraid to look closer. We are afraid to examine this emotion that we so vehemently call hate. Yes, we say the Anti-Fairies are bad luck, but did we ever have any proof of that? We fence them in our backyards with hordes of good-luck charms, but what magnet has ever been repelled by its opposite?

Drive away the Anti-Fairies. For the sake of your sanity, drive them off. Don't let them too close, and for dust's sake don't love one of them, or you'll remember what you've lost, what you were never given, what you were promised at birth and then denied. A single Anti-Fairy kiss upon Fairy skin is a beautiful drug authorized only by the cruelest mistress. It's indescribably perfect, that feeling of being complete and whole, and I wouldn't wish it on anybody. Dear King Nuada, I pray it's because of my feathered wings that I am affected as I am, that my father Split wrong, that I was born Elector and Guide together with only one of my three puzzle pieces out of place, because just the thought of anyone else reacting to the emptiness as strongly as I do sickens me to my core.

Shylinda, I'm so sorry. If you're reading these tablets, it's too late.

I love you, dear. But I hate to see you mad, and I know that what I'm about to do will make you furious. My life is a journey and it leads where it will. I need to feel complete again- I want this, I want this so badly, just one night. I can't push against it anymore. That was then. This is now.

One night, darling. Just give me one night. I'll only want her this one night, and that will be enough. I'll quit, I swear. Terminate the project. Release the Anti-Fairies. I'll kiss the clouds you float above for as long as I live, but by Claímh Solais, I have _got_ to have this one night. I need to know wholeness again.

I have labeled this tablet Mistake Number 26. The next will be Mistake Number 31. I'm counting tonight as five.

* * *

F. Sunbeam-

Anti-Shylinda's eyes turned from dull red to honey-amber overnight. She hunkers in one of the dusty corners of the basement, clutching a knife in her hand, just shivering. She will not speak to me.

Rhoswen and Anti-Jay are nowhere to be found.


	32. (79) Think Positive

_Summary:_ Anti-Cosmo is stressed about Anti-Wanda and her pregnancy, so H.P., Anti-Sanderson, and Jorgen abduct him for a night of fun.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Cosmo, H.P., Jorgen, Anti-Sanderson, Norm, Chief Sunchosen, assorted fairies, Anti-Wanda (Mentioned), Foop (Mentioned)

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Show Off" / "Shouldn't Have Survived"

 _Prerequisites:_ None; see also, "Scary Godcouple"

* * *

 **79\. Think Positive** (One week prior "Anti-Poof")

 _Year of Breath; Spring of the Frozen Planet_

* * *

Wooden unicorns and sailing ships. Alphabet blocks so dusty that he could hardly make out the letters even when he rubbed them with several spidery threads of his white shawl. Floor puzzles with just enough pieces to encourage a couple of foolish children to give them another run, only for the day to end in slapping and shouted accusations when too many turned up missing. Anti-Cosmo shut the toy chest without removing anything and leaned his chin on top of it.

"You _idiot_. You bloody imbecile. To think you actually thought someone was going to get some use out of these old things again. Ohhh, no… Not your son, Julius. This is just what you deserve."

Shutting his eyes gave him emotional vertigo. But keeping them open wasn't much better, with the image of a tiny, limp, blue… _thing_ burned into the back of his brain.

"Anti-Kanin did it right," he mumbled into his crossed arms. "And Anti-Kyler made it look _sooo_ easy. And in front of the entire camarilla, you just go and do _that_ , oh Julius, old boy… What's happened to you? Is this what it's like, getting old?"

He pitied himself for another several minutes, then shook his head and rose to his feet. His claws scratched against stone. The shawl kept his wings folded against his back. Anti-Cosmo tightened his grip on its leaf-shaped clasp with one hand as he crossed the nursery to the black crib. It stood alone as he did, comprised of friendly rubber bars and butterfly netting. A curious parallel of him, blue-furred in soft pajama bottoms and lacy shawl. Nicks and dents marred the sides of its coffin-shaped lower half.

It wasn't the same crib Anti-Cosmo had used himself as a child. That one had been wheeled across the drawbridge and offered to some desperate widow millennia ago. A few members of the camarilla had borne pups of their own (all the ones Anti-Cosmo had hoped would never procreate, no less), and they had been eager to scour the storerooms for a couple of days in search of their own unused equipment if it meant weaseling out of actual work…

… Anti-Wanda had refused them. She and her Daddy had built this crib themselves a mere two nights after they'd learned of Poof's existence. Now, Anti-Cosmo wrapped his claws over its railing and leaned so far over, he could see each muscle and tuft of fur and the old scars that even regeneration had never healed on his bare chest. His monocle slipped out of place and bounced on its cord. It hit the bars with a dull _thwack, thwack._

"I'd thought perhaps your p _rrr_ ivate name could be Tiberius, after your grandfather. Well, really I wanted 'Foop', for it's a fine name of Genie origin and I do enjoy the company of genies, though with your counterpart tottering about by the name of Poof, I feel both vindicated and silly for it now… Well. At least our naming traditions are the one thing the Fairies can't tear away from us. Oh, yes. As long as we have that, we'll be all right, you know what I mean? Isn't that just _so_ believable?"

Cold, empty silence echoed back from the crib. Anti-Cosmo laughed, once- a harsh, bitter, sarcastic laugh, and shoved himself away.

"Not that it means anything to you. Well. Good night, dear boy. This, all of it, was worth a try. You have to live once."

The two candles, one with a pink flame and one green, still burned on the dusty changing table beside the crib. Anti-Cosmo gripped the shawl with crossed arms and leaned down to blow them out together.

Immediately after their light disappeared, there was a knock at the Castle's front door.

Even up the stairs and several rooms down the hall, Anti-Cosmo picked up on the sound. Difficult not to- it thunked. _Was_ that a knock politely requesting entry, or was that a battering ram declaring war?

Very slowly, he leaned one palm against the changing table. Even more slowly, he turned and stared across the nursery to the one circular window high on the wall. A slice of moonlight beamed through the hole, half-swallowed by a passing cloud. After a brief moment had passed, the knock came again. This time it was a much softer knock, oddly enough, as though the fist making it had in the space of ten seconds gone down a dozen glove sizes.

"Who the devil… At half past midnight?"

He continued to linger by the table, increasingly reluctant to leave the silent nursery as he imagined in painstaking detail all the pestering anti-fairies who might have wanted to storm the drawbridge to fling insults at him and every reason why he deserved it. In recent times especially. His tongue slipped from between his fangs; he pulled a face. But, he did release the table and start for the nursery door. As he drew his wand from its sheath, Anti-Cosmo wrestled with the decision of whether to _poof_ to the castle entrance directly, or simply take the long way. On the one hand, any news that brought some poor sap scratching at the door like a cù sith in the rain was bound to be urgent.

On the other, it was the middle of the _smokeforsaken night._

Making the short trip by foot would give him a bit of time to gather his temper under control. As he saw it? It was his castle. He would not be rushed against his will. Particularly not when he was in mourning. Thus satisfied, Anti-Cosmo walked back through the upper hallway and descended the right-hand staircase on his own sweet time, thank you very much.

A third knock on the enormous double doors. A low voice on the other side complained about the way they were made of glossy polished stone, and then realized why knocking on wood wasn't normally presented as an option in Anti-Fairy World and trailed off. Still running half a dozen snarky responses through his head, Anti-Cosmo took the heavy ring on the left in his hand and heaved the door inward.

And immediately screamed when Jorgen's enormous hand clapped over his mouth.

 _Thumb_ , he realized a second later as Jorgen lifted him into the air. He kicked his feet uselessly, squirming his crumpled wings. That was Jorgen's entire thumb pressing against his face. All things considered, he fit distressingly well in the enormous fairy's hand, like a grape. Oooh, curse those purebred von Strangle genes bulging beneath his muscled skin! Of all the bloodlines to retain so much of their size from the days of the Aos Sí long ago, wouldn't it be _sooo_ funny for the whole clan of them to have such aggressive personalities to boot?

"Ha! Haha!" Jorgen opened his fist at eye level and turned his palm towards the sky. This left the shaken anti-fairy clinging to a pinky that came up to his knees. "I knew my brilliant plan to lure Anti-Cosmo out to the courtyard and into my clutches would not fail this time!"

A fuzzy green face popped over his shoulder, wagging a scolding claw. "'Ey, be fair. You had no clue it was him 'til you heard him squeal, ya big lug. Imagine if you woulda snatched Anti-Wanda up instead. Scare her an' the baby half ta Plane 23! Shame on you."

"Hap, don't be rude," drawled a third voice from somewhere near Jorgen's ankle. "You know the man isn't Daoist."

Rolling his eyes at the scolding, Anti-Sanderson stuck his treasured party blower in his mouth and blew it with a honk. H.P. adjusted his glasses and blinked up at him, unamused.

Anti-Cosmo pressed a hand to the prickling fluff on his chest, but otherwise did not make any sudden movements. Two of these faces he hadn't seen since those dratted Fairy World Games. The other for… Well, he couldn't be sure exactly how long it had been since the last Council meeting. Never mind that now- Either way, the Fairy World Games had been a month ago, and he hadn't so much as stepped toe across the border since. No evil schemes. No spies. Not so much as a single prank call either.

No. Anti-Cosmo ran through his mental list of recent wrongdoings once more, but confirmed his thoughts again. He'd done nothing wrong- nothing, at least, that should warrant Jorgen's attention at such an odd hour or lead him to end the night in jail. A grinning Jorgen made for an indefinite signal at best. But Jorgen AND Anti-Sanderson in the same general area without going for one another's throats… That was more of a curiosity than a reason to fret. And with H.P. leaning against Jorgen's knee with one casual hand and no irritating little tagalong in sight, Anti-Cosmo thought that was as good a reassurance of his safety as could expect to get.

He took two more beats to be sure of his senses, and then slowly replaced his dangling monocle against his eye. "J… Jorgen? Anti-Sanderson? And H.P.? What in blue blazes are the three of you doing on my front porch at this time in the morning?" He glanced at the anti-pixie clinging to Jorgen's ear. "While sober?"

Anti-Sanderson laughed. "Not for long, chief."

Jorgen took Anti-Cosmo by the scruff of his neck and swung him towards the convertible limousine parked haphazardly at the end of the drawbridge. Anti-Cosmo yelped and grabbed for Jorgen's chipped thumbnail, but it didn't stop the giant fairy from plopping him into the middle seat. "Don't fight me on this one, Anti-Cosmo. We pitched in and we are all taking you out to Serentip tonight."

Anti-Sanderson backflipped into the air. "We are gonna parrr-tay! _Whoa!_ Can't fly! Going down!"

H.P. made no effort to catch him. Instead, he opened the limo's driver door and calmly buckled himself in.

"Serentip," Anti-Cosmo repeated, digging his claws into the leather of the seats. Tough, thick leather. "Party?"

Jorgen stopped. His head cocked to one side. For the first time, he seemed to take in the black nightcap, disheveled blue hair, and the fact that Anti-Cosmo was otherwise dressed only in the navy checkered bottoms of his least favorite pajamas and his ghostly mourning shawl, and that _oh yeah it was the middle of the night._ "Have I forgotten to compensate for the time zones again? Oh, darn it!"

As Anti-Sanderson crashed into the seat on Anti-Cosmo's left, he stuck out his tongue. It flickered like a slice of lime between his yellow fangs. "Well, we woulda been in the Hy-Brasil Central zone right now if _someone_ hadn't gone and redrawn all the lines so they were all straight and cut like a bunch of cities in half, huh?"

H.P. tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "I'm not sorry."

"Serentip," Anti-Cosmo said for the second time. The hairs shivered on the back of his neck. "That filthy port city on Plane 5? With the crowded sugar bars and the shady alleys and the tourist shops and the gambling house? Have you all gone mad? Good smoke, you have. You've all cracked and I'm the only one of us left with a shred of sanity!" He shoved his wings from beneath their covering and unfurled them with a snap. "No. Good day to you all!"

When he flew past Jorgen's shoulder, Jorgen simply brought his hand up and caught him. He dropped the anti-fairy back in the car. "Tough tuna salad, shakywings. We have made our VIP dinner reservations, and you are only making it increasingly obvious that you need to unwind more than anyone."

While the thought of a large meal at a respectable Fairy restaurant was reassuring, the timing of the event was hardly preferable. Oblivious to this, Anti-Sanderson waved his hand in the air like a unicorn's swatting tail. "Hey, hey, unwinding is good for the soul and the spine!"

"I'm not decent," protested the anti-fairy, finally fumbling to cover his shirtless body with his hands. Even when pulled shut, it wasn't like the wispy shawl covered a great deal.

H.P. leaned back in his seat. "A.C., in case you haven't noticed, you're all scales on the back and fuzz in the front. Like an armadillo. Literally no one cares. Also, you're a drake. There's not much there to hide."

Not much but a few purple marks across his neck he didn't exactly want to flaunt. Anti-Cosmo pinched his lip. "Yes, but _no one_ sees me uncovered outside the roosting room! Let's not forget I'm an important figurehead and I have an image to maintain. Ooh, if the poofarazzi gets wind of this…!"

"-then there'll be Darkness to pay. I understand. Cool off, dude. I can afford it for all of us. Anyway, you should've thought about this problem before you opened the door half-dressed." H.P. tossed him a wrinkled white shirt he'd pulled from beneath the passenger seat. "Here. You can put that on."

Anti-Cosmo shoved one wrist across his mouth. His clawed toes curled into the gray carpet. "Why are you all _here?_ "

"Not to hurl you in my jail," Jorgen assured him. "Or at least, I will not be hurling yet."

"How charming."

Anti-Sanderson sat forward on his knees. _Good glory_ , Anti-Cosmo thought when he looked at him. He really needed to march over to Anti-Pixie Isle and force a new wardrobe on that boy, didn't he? One of his shoes was gray, the other white, and the toes had worn away until they looked more like sandals and his broken claws stuck out like worms. That yellow jacket with the red splotches he always wore and never washed hung from his shoulders in patches and tatters. It left more than a few of the thick pink scars on his back exposed to the cold air. His father's old blue hat kept slipping over his eyes. Recently he'd tied a batch of jingle bells to its end, so it twinkled even louder than the Head Pixie's little star every time he moved. And his purple trousers! Well, perhaps best not to look too long at those, considering that his scruffy green _tail_ wagged shamelessly in the air…

… Yes, Anti-Cosmo redirected his attention to the clasped hands in his lap.

"Aww, what'd you think we were up to?" Anti-Sanderson cooed. "We're dragging you out to a diape' party, 'cuz we love ya, boss."

Anti-Cosmo lifted his eyes again. "Diaper party? You mean… Oh, smoke. This is that Seelie tradition of showering expecting parents with gifts and a game night, isn't it?"

Jorgen crouched beside the limo. Even with hot effervescence now ruffling his ears, Anti-Cosmo couldn't help but flick his gaze between the fairy and the passenger seat. It was shoved back and rumpled, the dashboard dented- obviously, Jorgen had ridden there on the way up, though how he'd managed to cram himself in was a secret yet unexplained. "Well," he said, snaking a muscled arm behind Anti-Cosmo's and Anti-Sanderson's necks, "we cannot simply sit and do nothing but let your wife steal all the womanly attention while you slip deep into obscurity with no friends."

"I have friends," Anti-Cosmo whined as his ears drooped.

Jorgen stared at him down his nose. "And so we came, didn't we?"

"We came for moral support," H.P. acknowledged, "and because this is my last chance to drink before I have to worry about Pixie 507. You know I never turn down a night to clink soda bottles with my closest compatriots."

Anti-Sanderson grinned. He leaned across Anti-Cosmo's lap to tap Jorgen on the wrist. "Heeey! Speakin' of which, congrats on the wedding you didn't invite me to! That Tooth Fairy's a fine slice of cheese. When does the next von Strangle puppet hit the scene?"

"Oh gods," Anti-Cosmo muttered, sinking into his seat.

"Anti-pixies have got virgin-dar," Anti-Sanderson went on. Smugness fell like drool from his tongue. "Look, you'll have to ask her about doin' it sometime. You're getting old, pops!"

Jorgen put his hand on the headrest of H.P.'s seat and squeezed. "And so is he."

H.P. paused. His hand hovered over the empty mug in the limo's cup holder. "I literally cannot argue with that."

"Jorgen. Hap. H.P." Anti-Cosmo straightened up, folding his wings along his spine. "Look here. In all honesty, I do recognize and appreciate what you are trying to do for me, but you don't understand. Th-there's been a misunderstanding."

"What?" Jorgen had gotten distracted with the leather wedding band on his middle finger (A wedding band, Anti-Cosmo couldn't help noticing, which he himself could easily have used as a belt). "Cosmo and Wanda had a fairy baby. You are Cosmo's anti-fairy. You and Anti-Wanda are due to have a fairy baby. What could be clearer than that?"

Anti-Cosmo swallowed. The two candles in the nursery burned against the backs of his eyelids. "Um…"

"You don't wanna go with us?"

That was Anti-Sanderson. Nervous claws tapped against the padded seats. At the crack in his voice, even H.P. turned around with knitted brows.

"Anti-Cosmo, you can't be serious. I even left Sanderson at home for this. You've always said you'd enjoy just the four of us one day getting-"

"I know what I once said!" Anti-Cosmo grabbed two handfuls of his hair and puffed out his cheeks. "Just- just… It's not you, it's just that…"

" _Please?_ "

Jorgen on the ground, Anti-Sanderson on the limo floor, H.P. in the front seat. All three of them were literally on their knees, holding up clasped hands as they attacked him on all fronts with anxious eyes. Their evening fun balanced on a thin cord. Anti-Cosmo stared back, his jaw slack against his chest.

 _Oh my smoke,_ he thought. _Even with the mourning shawl, they really don't know!_

Well, how could they?

Anti-Sanderson coughed. "Y'know, Jorgen let me off the Isle for this, and I don't really wanna get paraded back like a loser, so…"

Anti-Cosmo hesitated, clutching the white shirt H.P. had tossed him in his lap. "I was going to stay here with Anti-Wanda and the baby. She's, um, pregnant and everything."

Jorgen scoffed, "You'll let her wander the entire Region with the baby on the way, and you cannot let her stay home without you for even one night?"

"I thought we were friends," H.P. pouted in monotone. "Have I read too much into our relationship?"

"Smoof, I don't want to do this. The side effects of my iris virus are starting to act up again and I'm not at all in the mood…"

Anti-Sanderson's hand came smacking hard and fast below the wings. "And that's why we're gonna fix that. Lose the shoulde' dress, captain. Where we're going, blue's a color, not a mood."

For a long time, Anti-Cosmo kneaded his toes into the soft limo carpet. It was gray carpet. Very nice gray carpet. And clean. H.P.'s personal ride, most likely (or one of them). Anti-Sanderson bounced on his right with seatbelt buckle in hand, bells jingling from his hat. Free of his island prison and excited to mingle again. Jorgen had a star-shaped pager dangling from his belt, but no giant staff in plain sight. And there was him, cold and quiet and very much alone tonight.

They were just four drakes. Hoping to do what drakes do at parties on Saturday nights.

Anti-Cosmo allowed himself to smile and pulled the nightcap off his usual bowler hat. Then he unfastened the clasp on his shawl. When he'd carefully untangled the threads from his wings, he set it aside and unfolded the wrinkled white shirt instead.

"Well. Perhaps I _could_ use a bit of a lift to my spirits tonight, hm? I won't promise to be very exciting, but I won't make the lot of you miserable on my account."

Anti-Sanderson wrenched open the cardboard box at his feet and hurled a handful of the contents into the air. Diapers fell like raindrops on their heads. "Woo-wee! H-Pix, toss me the keys! I know a shortcut."

Jorgen poked Anti-Sanderson on the head as he stepped over the entire cloudcar and then began to fold himself in the passenger's seat. "We would hardly need to drive if we wanted to skip the ride."

"But I wanna get behind the wheel! I never get to be behind the wheel!"

H.P. plugged the star-capped antenna of his cell phone into the key slot and closed the drawer after it. "Because you don't have a license. Or an active wand, and I'm not paying your coverage. It's my limo. I drive."

Anti-Cosmo clicked his belt across his lap. "H.P., I have a question regarding the size of this car and its alleged 'limousine' status-"

"You can shut up."

The car's wheels spun until white smoke leaked out from beneath the chassis. Anti-Cosmo leaned from the side until a miniature cloud had taken form underneath them, and H.P. guided their ride across the bright purple drawbridge.

"Spikes in your driveway?"

"They funnel out the helepolises."

"Ah."

The anti-fairy drew back his head. "You've scouted out a nice place to spend your evening, I hope? What is it? A Fairy World lake with cold water and a private beach, and a cooler of ice and drinks on a table of snacks? A theatre? Ooh, I do love a good play. Perhaps a day at the races? While I'm not normally a betting man, I might could be coaxed to get in on the sport for just one night. Though I will need to make a stop to draw out some of my funds. Well?"

"Oh, you know," Jorgen said with a vague flick of his hand.

Anti-Cosmo tightened his smile until it twitched into a thin line. "Ahaha… But really, where are we going?"

"Hey," Anti-Sanderson chirped, sliding the cardboard box over to Anti-Cosmo with his foot. "Did you see this stack of diape's we brought along for you? And this is just one box. We've got like six more in the trunk. How's that for a gift showe'?"

Anti-Cosmo sat silently rigid with his hands wrapped over his knees as the cloudcar bumped its way across Anti-Fairy World at a tauntingly 'chicken with the Keepers' kind of speed. Owls and small bats flitted by occasionally, chasing insects and rodents that now-sleeping anti-fairies had left to live another night.

"H.P.?" he said finally when the skies on the horizon began to roll from red to pale purple. "Jorgen? Hap? Are you by chance dragging me out to a nightclub?"

"I wouldn't call it a nightclub," H.P. said carefully.

"Oh gods, stop the car. Stop it or I'll jump, I swear!"

Anti-Sanderson was on him immediately, holding his shoulders and shushing him with tongue clicks and pats. "Hey, hey, it's nothin' bad, s'not like we're sneaking you out to a strip club or the like. Not when we're celebrating your wife and baby, c'mon, guy. Don't get that way."

Anti-Cosmo glared at him as the Divide gate came into view ahead, along with the Port of Entry booth and a familiar floating blackboard. _Welcome to Hy-Brasil, The Land Red Like an Ember- Otherwise known as Anti-Fairy World_ was scrawled across the top. The numbers 1 through 24 were written out beneath it in fuzzy, glowing white. The 3 was currently green and circled. _NEW_ had been written above the 2 in all capital letters. The 8 was marked with a star and a _You are here_. Numbers 13 through 24 were all crossed out.

H.P. slowed the car. More than a handful of anti-fairies flitted around the Divide, giggling like pups over a slipper full of spiders. The irritating green film that had once spanned between the gate's sky-reaching bars had been removed following a particularly nasty Council meeting concerning that incident with the strange visitors from the bulgy universe. Or more specifically, a Council meeting concerning an incident with sharp-tongued, high-shouldered, and sleep-deprived Timothy standing his ground against the smoldering tip of Jorgen's staff (A good boy, and Anti-Cosmo had given up on using Cosmo's fagiggly gland to excuse his growing affection for the lad). But, though the Barrier had gone down, bitter feelings had not, and legal politeness insisted the car pull up beside the camarilla member on duty and state their business if they planned to pass through.

Hm? Oh, yes. To Anti-Sanderson, Anti-Cosmo said, "I assure you, if a single damsel _poof_ s away her clothes in front of me, I'll snatch up the nearest wand and flash back to the gate here in the time it takes a genie to snap his fingers. I'll not do anything that would injure Anti-Wanda's feelings."

Anti-Sanderson chuckled. "You're so old-fashioned, turkeypaste."

The comment itself didn't sting, but as his thoughts wandered to his own words and whether he would have the courage to follow through with them if the situation should present itself, Anti-Cosmo lowered his burning face.

"We're going back the other way now," H.P. told Anti-Scarlett as he tipped down his glasses. She hovered by the gate in her booth, her ears twitching as she sized up their misfit traveling party. He continued with, "And now we have the High Count and Head Anti-Pixie with us. Please set our destination to Plane 5."

Anti-Sanderson blew his party blower in greeting. Anti-Scarlett looked in Anti-Cosmo's direction. He bobbed his head.

"Yes, I'm in my proper frame of mind, darling. I'll only be out a couple of hours. These two are out to a late supper, Hap and I to an early breakfast, hm? If Anti-Wanda wakes before my return, tell her I'll be home to the Castle soon with one of those little pink Fairy cakes she so dearly likes."

"Have a nice trip," she said, sounding as puzzled as she looked, but she picked up her wand and gave it a wave anyway. A light silver mist settled around the cloudcar. It stayed silver around Jorgen and H.P., but the vapor clinging to Anti-Cosmo instantly turned gold, and the vapor around Anti-Sanderson went bright scarlet.

"Aw, what?"

"Hand it all over, sir," Anti-Scarlett deadpanned, putting the wand down.

The anti-pixie made a face, but shuffled around in the pockets of his hideous jacket. He pulled out a pair of safety scissors, a crumpled paper bag with sticky traces of peppermint bark around its opening, a dead locust, and a tiny calico kitten who blinked and mewled. He hopped from the car to place them all on Anti-Scarlett's desk.

"That's the 'smuggling cultural artifacts' alert on me, wasn't it?" Anti-Cosmo showed her that his pajama pants and white shirt had no pockets. "Sunnie set it off."

"Can you ask him to tone it down so we can get through?" Jorgen asked, glancing back.

Anti-Cosmo stared at him as Anti-Sanderson continued searching his pockets for contraband items. "Yes, Jorgen. I can casually wave my hand and snap my intimate link with the ancient nature spirit whose influence over water I channel, whose zodiac I represent on the camarilla, and who won't hesitate to snatch my body for a vessel the instant I set foot inside any of his b _rrr_ others _'_ temples."

"I know I have seen him judge at the Fairy World Games and the Bake-Off before," the fairy mumbled, injured.

"So, about the scientific evidence regarding Rhoswen syndrome's support of Daoism," H.P. said, folding his arms behind his neck. "We should talk about that."

"Oh gods, H.P., not this again. You realize you are literally arguing your theology against that of a drake who spends 99.9% of his waking life in the silent but ever-present company of the actual third-oldest grandson of Mother Nature and Father Time." Anti-Cosmo reached for the blue gem on his cravat, then remembered what he'd been wearing when Jorgen had yanked him through the Castle door. His nose twitched.

"Yes," H.P. mused. "I've met Sunnie. And frankly I'm not impressed."

" _You bulldozed his sacred temple to make room for a Boudacian restaurant!_ He wasn't exactly in the most stable frame of mind."

"It was in my way."

Anti-Sanderson slapped another fistful of dried leaves on Anti-Scarlett's desk. "Guys, guys, just be like me. I'm both Daoist and Zodii."

They both ignored him.

"Well, High Count, you have no shoes for me to check, so I guess you're clean." Anti-Scarlett waved her wand again. The silver mist settled again and went red when it touched Anti-Sanderson as before. H.P. and Jorgen turned around. Rolling his eyes so their lavender color flashed, Anti-Sanderson began another search through his pockets.

"I don't know what else you want from me, star-top. I've given over everything but my empty candy wrappers and a couple a' skipping stones."

"You can keep those. What's that in your sheath?"

Anti-Sanderson hesitated. Then, with a long scratch of unpeeled bark rubbing against silver, he drew a battered wand. "Hey, this is just gingertie wood. I grew it myself in one of my greenhouses. I'm allowed to have this. Look, it doesn't even have rosewate' in the star cap. C'mon, Anti-Scar, you're embarrassing me in front a' the guys. Can we go?"

Now satisfied that he was silver, Anti-Scarlett rotated a dial in her booth. The circle around the number 3 on the blackboard clicked to 4, and then to 5. After a good sixty seconds, the white number lit up green. Their connection was stable. H.P. slid his glasses into place again and leaned back against his seat. Jorgen tapped one large finger against the dashboard and finally gave a shout to send the anti-fairies in their path scampering away. The gate swung open to make way for the cloudcar, and they sped through. _Welcome to Tír Ildáthach_ read the sign on this side, _The Land of Many Colors_. _Otherwise known as Fairy World. Plane 5: You are here._

Beyond the booth on this side of the gate, they were greeted by sprawling fields of pink and green clover. Clover that the residents of Little Olympus kept saying they'd get around to yanking out, and yet never did. The wafting aura some of the hidden four-leafs gave off was enough to make both Anti-Fairies in the car break into light rashes as they drove past. Anti-Cosmo had crossed this way hundreds of times before, but he still found himself nibbling on his lower lip as he considered what the clover represented. The Barrier _was_ down now, legally. He really ought to bring up this clover issue the next time he attended a Council meeting. It was high time for the quiet acts of racism to change around here.

Once under the Sunrise Skies again, the cloudcar rapidly picked up speed. Anti-Sanderson hurled pebbles and candy wrappers at stray foops and coin sith sniffing among greasy heaps of trash bags. The tiny tourist town of Little Olympus faded behind them. Anti-Cosmo sank his claws into the seat leather as their ride took every jump between the clouds as easily as a crack in the sidewalk. Jorgen shouted scores for every approaching cloudbreak, and laughed each time they landed across a gap with a particularly heavy thump.

"Woo!" Anti-Sanderson leaned far over the right side, his scruffy tail waving. "We're zooming fast now. I gotta borrow Anti-Longwood's jeep more often. Oh smoke, push it harder, H-Pix! Harder!"

"I'm going to be sick," Anti-Cosmo groaned.

"Don't puke butterflies in my nice clean limo."

"I will change course and have you thrown in jail," Jorgen agreed.

So Anti-Cosmo stuffed the long sleeve of his borrowed shirt between his fangs and bit down hard. He managed to keep his stomach settled, even though he could feel the beginnings of sickly caterpillars gathering at the base of his throat, all the way to Serentip. When the cloudcar mercifully rolled to a stop and settled in a parking space, melding its wheels to the solid vapor below, Anti-Cosmo raised his eyes to the tall, brass-colored building that spread to the sky.

Perhaps they weren't the first thing everyone noticed, but Anti-Cosmo's eyes shot instantly to the enormous glass windows plastered across the walls, and he found himself gritting his fangs. Note to self, then: He wouldn't let himself forget to echolocate. Limestone carvings of great horned owls perched in place of the more traditional gargoyles on every window ledge. A neon sun with twirling beams shooting from its center flashed on a sign above the building's double doors, each of which was propped open by a shameless pixie scouting out… business opportunities. Both waved when they saw their boss's silver car settle in the lot. Music poured through those open doors and flitted through the air like a tangible thing. A pair of Keepers in their water-blue uniforms idled beneath a street sign on the corner that read _Artemis_ and _Cairo_. Their squad car lazed on the sidewalk behind them. The ride had ended, but Anti-Cosmo almost emptied his stomach anyway.

"Hold the scry bowl. This is the Artemis Lounge. I specifically remember you saying we wouldn't be going to a nightclub tonight."

"I said I wouldn't call it a nightclub," H.P. corrected, opening the ignition drawer again. He unplugged his starpiece. "If I had, you would have jumped out of my limo and been smashed flat. That's gross. Everybody out."

Jorgen stepped over the side of the convertible without opening his door, and Anti-Sanderson happily followed his lead. Anti-Cosmo remained rooted where he sat.

"I'm not going. All three of you know exactly who owns this place."

"Of course," Anti-Sanderson said without missing a beat. "What bette' place is there for the leade's of fou' different species to hang out for the night?"

H.P. shrugged. "It's true. Here, people like us get free drinks between sunset and sunrise." To emphasize this idea, he pointed to the sun on the neon sign. "Red means it's sunset in the time zone below. When it's sunrise down there, the sign turns purple. See?"

"You said you paid to make reservations," Anti-Cosmo hissed.

Anti-Sanderson spread his arms and wings together. "Why would we reserve anything othe' than the Kingly Korner, bluebird? You know it's _ours_. They've got an enti'e fifth of our VIP booth decorated in anti-pixie colo's!"

Anti-Cosmo refrained from asking the obvious question: If there were any colors that _weren't_ considered anti-pixie colors.

"I could carry you, if that lets us get in faster," Jorgen offered.

The Head Pixie raised one hand, his fingers poised to snap. Then he let it drop. "Anti-Cosmo, this place has existed for less than… more than… about three millennia, and you've never been inside once. You're celebrating something special. Let tonight be that night."

"There's unlimited soft-serve ice cream to the fou' of us," Anti-Sanderson wheedled.

"It comes at too high a price, if _she's_ going to be huffing down our necks. She offers us four exclusive benefits to get us right where she wants us, and you all know it. We're walking into land of the lotus-eaters so she can lure us into sin, for no reason but to squish us all beneath her sandal and mock us horribly while she strips our defenses bare. Every time! I don't understand. While I can't speak on Anti-Sanderson's behalf since I was under the impression he was _not to leave his Isle without my explicit permission_ , I know that _you two_ both constantly subject yourselves to this torture. Then I have to hear you complain about your regrets if ever our unfortunate paths cross soon after. She's seductive and sadistic, and whenever you're sober, you all despise her. I'm not going."

Anti-Cosmo ended his rant with a huff. All three members of his audience moved to either massage their knuckles, rub behind their necks, or fiddle with the ends of their wings. Anti-Cosmo watched them twitch with self-satisfied pleasure, though it didn't actually make him feel much better. "Sometimes we make it through all night and we don't bump into her," Jorgen said.

Anti-Sanderson stuck up his nose. "Well, you puppies can stay here in the limo with the sou'puss if you want to. But I'm an anti-pixie. I don't hate no one and no one outfoxes an anti-pixie in clubbing terr'atory. Peace out." With a parting blow of his party blower, he cheerily skipped away.

"Pixie 507," H.P. said by way of explanation, and went after him in a slightly more dignified manner. Anti-Cosmo bit his desperate lip.

"Um. Jorgen?"

"I cannot simply let you out of my sight in Fairy World," the giant fairy mumbled. His fingers twitched for a staff he didn't have on him, bones crunching as he flexed his hand. Muscles rippled beneath his sleeveless green shirt.

As the reality of he, more often a wanted criminal mastermind than he wasn't, sitting in a parking lot alone with the short-fused and now quite frustrated Keeper of Da Rules sank in, Anti-Cosmo's claws flashed for his seatbelt. "You know, on second thought, a night in the Lounge sounds like a lovely way to pass an evening. Well, ta!"

The two of them caught up to H.P. and Anti-Sanderson just outside the doors (Jorgen before Anti-Cosmo, even with the latter straining his wings). Since H.P. had gotten distracted by his two spritely pixies (Anti-Cosmo knew _exactly_ why they were stationed there and didn't endorse it in the least), he tentatively followed Anti-Sanderson inside.

First, they had to stop so they could be ID'd and deprived of their starpieces. Two curtains crafted entirely of ruddy brown feathers blocked the way further. Or more correctly, they _would_ have had to stop so they could be ID'd and deprived of their starpieces. There was a short line of waiting Fairykind ahead of them, but the bouncer scrutinizing the front ishigaq's card noticed them immediately and lit up. Everyone snapped to attention as a wave of pheromones and dominance signals washed over them all. No one protested when the cheery bouncer waved them through. In fact, several people even begged for autographs, or reached out to brush their fingers across their clothes and whisper and giggle in the shadows. Anti-Cosmo slipped into his broadest smile and greeted each one who called him by name in the properly modest manner. In mourning or not, he could manage that.

Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Sanderson, and Jorgen (and H.P., who had hurried after them) pushed through the feathered curtain together. While even now he considered himself too gentlemanly to be caught in such a place, the natural flutter of curiosity that guided so many of his actions kept him moving anyway. H.P. was right. He'd never been inside the Lounge before. Sure, he'd heard stories from the camarilla. Anti-Scott in particular was fond of the place. Anti-Cosmo had high suspicions that Anti-Wanda's frequent travels led her here any time she could slip through the Barrier, but he never pressed her about it.

Well, he was firm in his personal cleanliness, she a free spirit he trusted completely with her own reins. Sometimes he elected not to spring her out of prison until he'd managed to get a little work done in the peace and quiet of the Castle. Sometimes peace and quiet snapped her nerves and she sought a burst of energy from laughter and smiles- and the occasional broken mirror or sprinkle of salt among a crowd. Such was the nature of their relationship.

The roar of the music hit them first- louder, somehow, on this side of the curtain than even a step away. Was it really music? Or only chaos? Either way it was painful, neither to his tastes in terms of style nor set at a volume suitable for Anti-Fairy ears. All too quickly, it became apparent that the Artemis Lounge had been tailored to individuals who relied on their sight far more than their hearing to navigate. Purple and blue lights streamed to and from all directions. Several of them rotated around the room, which consisted of huge couches, squishy chairs, and side tables. Dozens and dozens of tiny side tables were piled high with empty cans and bottles. Most of them floated in the air. A stage lay somewhere to Anti-Cosmo's right… or at least, he guessed it did, considering that the space over there was so empty, and positioned behind a low rail. Enormous pink chandeliers, dripping with long trails of crystal-like bulbs, hung over the entire dance floor. The second floor was a balcony, circling in a ring over their heads.

Along its edges, the place was dark. Apparently those floor-to-ceiling windows he'd seen from outside were all positioned upstairs. Not that they would have let in much but dim starlight. Darkness wouldn't have been a problem, but with jazzy saxophones and blaring trumpets sweep jamming him from every possible side, his echolocation was effectively out of commission. Anti-Cosmo squeezed his eyes shut. The caterpillars returned to his stomach, this time blossoming into full butterflies as they struggled up his throat.

But Anti-Sanderson had him covered. He pressed two brass rings into Anti-Cosmo's palm. The anti-fairy blinked.

"These aren't-"

" _Canetis_ rings," said the anti-pixie, an embarrassed edge to his voice. "Even I need 'em sometimes, so I always keep a bunch on hand. But don't spread it around too much, bluebell. It'd wreck my whole crazy reputation and I worked hard on that."

Anti-Cosmo thanked him and clipped each ring into place. His ears, now weighed down by the metal, instantly folded into themselves and crumpled against his skull. Of course they didn't block everything that way - the rings were intended to scare inexperienced pups from up and wandering off wherever their roaming eyes or echolocation may lead them while their parents turned their backs; deafening all sounds would have been impractical - but they did tone the club's noise down to an actually manageable level. The clashing of the instruments even morphed into, well… music.

"Bette'?"

"Ohh, significantly."

He gazed again across the Lounge as he fiddled with the second ring. Yes, blue and purple streamlights filled the air. The place was enormous, though… not in the way he was used to. In Anti-Fairy World, buildings were long and low. Whole colonies of anti-fairies could hang together that way. Fairy World's architecture favored the vertical emphasis. The logical solution for a race of beings who wished to hover as they conversed. Rather than, you know… sit in grounded chairs.

To his left, a curled staircase with steps that looked gold (decorated with a few ignorant people who didn't seem to understand that the stairs were there to be stairs, not seats) ran up to the second floor. On the far side of the room, he could spot a bustling sugar bar. Colorful candy packets lined the back shelves, while cakes and brownies filled the glass cases in front. Even his nose could pick up the scents of orange and mint. In the center place of honor sat the soda fountain. Partly for practical purposes but mainly for aesthetic, barrels of what Anti-Cosmo assumed were straight, unwatered soda were positioned above each spout. Stacks of them reached all the way up the wall, until they hit the balcony of the second floor.

There was indeed a stage over to his right, with a performer making hand gestures and saying something he could no longer make out. Singing? Well, perhaps he wouldn't have heard her from here even without the rings. Floating couches and tables left plenty of room on the floor for dancing. If you could call those flailing movements dancing. Anti-Cosmo was not impressed. Anti-Fairy celebrations were far more elegant than these, and their entertainment graceful and refined.

Fairies and Anti-Fairies bustled about by foot and by wing, though the former group seemed to be the main partiers of the evening whereas the latter mostly made up the population flitting about with platters and drinks. With the Barrier down these days, more and more of his people were securing honest work, which was probably good news. Bad news for some of his more elaborate evil plans, but good news for them personally, and that was what mattered most. Anti-Cosmo tried to find a face he recognized, but the sheer amount of bustling bodies and whirring wings in the dark overwhelmed him too soon, and he closed his mouth.

Serentip was Fairy World's largest port city, and it was no accident that the owner of the Lounge had chosen to place her business here. Not only were Fairies and Anti-Fairies crossing the floor, but multiple alien races - Delkians, Scarabids, Muriros - mingled freely among them. Tourists on summer holiday? Starsailors eager to slip away from the docks? Most likely a bit of both. Even a couple of genies flickered at the edges of their hearing, registering as gonging sounds in the energy field even without snapping their fingers. Well, at least that would give him something to do, see if he could identify them as one of the dozens he'd met before…

Still, Anti-Cosmo couldn't hold back a sniff. The whole place smelled of oily skin, sweaty fur, and suffocating perfume, with the occasional whiff of vegetables and meat from those who had actually grabbed menus and requested meals. Evidently, Fairies did that. "Contrary to popular belief, we Anti-Fairies are the voice of sophistication and etiquette in the cloudlands. _Not_ blind chaos. I don't care if a sample of the population seem to be enjoying themselves tonight. Whenever I see messy displays such as this, I don't understand why any alien race ever chose to contact us at all."

"They din't," Anti-Sanderson chortled. "We had a' go to them. Why do you think the godchildren stuff eve' started? Politics." He lifted his hands above his head. "Okay. Guys, I brought bright pink bowties for everyone. That way we won't lose each othe' in the craziness."

Anti-Cosmo looked at him. Then he looked at H.P. Then he looked at Jorgen. "I'm not sure that will be necessary, actually." He grimaced and out of habit moved his hand down to his left hip. No wand, and no sheath either- those had been left in the Head Pixie's cloudcar. Hoping the others hadn't noticed his anxious twitch, he made a show of adjusting his monocle instead. "Well, I don't expect to have a long night. I'm very uncomfortable with all of this."

"You'll warm to it, sugarkale," Anti-Sanderson assured him, patting the anti-fairy's chest twice. The bells jingled on his hat. "You just need ta loosen up."

"No, I don't expect I'll be loosening up much." Anti-Cosmo skimmed his eyes around the club's lower floor once more, streaking his claws through his hair. Over the last two months, his usual attentiveness to it had slipped; while always carefully scruffy, his bangs had grown too long in the front, and his blue curls too thick in the back. His claws snagged in a tangle. He probably hadn't brushed it for a week. Maybe two. "I say. I haven't been a participant in a party with straight soda since… Smoke, would that have been my stag party? Charming event, that, by which of course I mean it wasn't."

"What abou' my coronation?"

"Ah, yes. Although, Anti-Wanda and I left early."

Anti-Sanderson stuck out his tongue. "Wow, I forgot you were lame. Let's go find our Korner. It's on the upper floor. Private suga' bar up there, all the time, just for us VIPs."

"And if you should catch the eye of a certain busybody damsel," Jorgen said, stepping over Anti-Cosmo's head, "I all of a sudden don't know you."

"Jorgen, we're hardly the least attention-grabbing of guests."

No one seemed to hear him. With a roll of his eyes, Anti-Cosmo spread his wings and flew up the stairs after his companions. Ah, well. The hustle and bustle of the club itself might not be to his specific tastes, but H.P. and Jorgen had both attended dozens of Tarrow Festivals at the Blue Castle over the centuries. Probably, Anti-Sanderson had too. Anti-Cosmo had shown them his party life. Now they wanted to show him theirs. The least he could do was think positive about it. If nothing else, he could revel in the fact that several Fairies recognized him and scooted out of his way, bending their heads and whispering as he passed.

At the top of the stairs, he paused. The smell of hot curry intertwined with ribbons of ancient magic was stronger up here, even to his pathetic nose. He knew that scent well. It had been burned into the back of his brain after thousands of years spent handling lamps and glowing blobby babies. The repetitive gonging noise ran low enough that his Seelie companions didn't appear to notice it (not that they ever seemed to in the best of circumstances, but then again, he never 'tasted' what they could sense either). The sound rattled his teeth right down to their roots. Though his ears had been flattened, Anti-Cosmo twitched them anyway.

Oh… He knew that vocal signature in the energy field. That genie was one of his.

Anti-Cosmo glanced in the direction his companions had gone. There were booths and tables spread around the balcony loop. Yes, there were those windows he had been eyeballing too, the view they offered of the city and docked skyships partially blocked by the hunched stone backs of chiseled owls. A live one even perched between them, gazing silently through the glass with a mouse dangling from its beak. Fewer people up here than below. Curious eyes slid over his face, recognizing his status and making way for him to pass, but no longer thronging around him for autographs and handshakes. They understood. Tonight, he was one of their crowd.

H.P., Jorgen, and Anti-Sanderson spritelined for a roped-off booth in the shadows that had an excellent view of the stage below and was situated near an equally roped-off sugar bar and soft serve ice cream station. As Anti-Sanderson had promised, the rounded bench had been split into five decorative patterns, and each drew inspiration from a particular Fairykind race; getting settled would keep them entertained for a minute. Anti-Cosmo's eyes trailed towards the balcony railing on his right.

There. A genie with thin shoulders, black curls, a pale blue vest, and a smoky tail glimmering the same color. He leaned over the banister, most probably scouting the dance floor below for a female genie he was interested in getting to know this evening. The end of his tail wound loosely around the nearest table leg.

The Head Pixie called his name. Anti-Cosmo glanced back and held up one claw, signalling that he only wanted a moment before he rejoined the group. Rather than follow them, he cleared his throat and approached the genie. "Well now. Out of your lamp for the eve and you didn't even swing by my Castle to fill me in on your latest excursions? I taught you better manners than that. I say, Norm, it's always herding black cats when it comes to reunions with you, hm?"

The genie's back stiffened unmistakably. For several seconds, Norm didn't turn around. His knuckles tightened over the rail. Even when he did twist, it wasn't in full, but he did glance down to get a look at the anti-fairy hovering near his waist. His familiar shades were perched up in his hair rather than his nose. As a rule, all Fairykind irises glowed like faint embers in the dark, though split among three counterparts it was a poor shadow of what their united Aos Sí ancestors had supposedly been able to achieve. But genies, well, they were ancient creatures too, and their eyes glowed like struck matches against a mirror.

Norm's eyes were violet. Hot, smoldering violet.

"Hey, Vladimir Vegan. A pleasure to bump into you again. And on neutral ground this time. I see your wardrobe's gone from blue to white." His eyes roamed down to Anti-Cosmo's feet. He arched one brow. "And… checkers are in this season, apparently. Finally gave up on those nightshirts after one too many flopped upside-down in your face?"

Anti-Cosmo ignored the comment, tracing his own eyes down Norm's arms. Norm saw him looking and his hands twitched. But, he didn't stuff them behind his back this time. Instead, he simply cleared his throat.

"I see from the way you're floating you still limp with your right wing when you fly. Right side loser, eh?"

"Yes, yes, you're awfully amusing." Anti-Cosmo checked both left and right, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention. He saw no humans. Only fellow magical beings, who had no ability to activate a genie's lamp. It would seem that Norm had come alone. Well, time to ask the innocent question, then. "I can clearly see you're here, and I see the braces are still on your wrists, but I don't see your master around."

Norm smirked. "Ended up in warm, sunny Seattle after Jarhead mistook my lamp for his wife's emergency coin bank and rushed me down to Tooth Fairy Enterprises. Fell on the conveyor belt and woke up to a startled little girl rubbing my lamp while she groped under her pillow for a coin. Standard 'I want a thousand more wishes' request is in play right now. I tricked her into thinking I can't grant any of them until she finishes telling me what they all are. Should be a few weeks at least before she finishes writing every single one down. Until she does, I'm as good as free."

"Clever boy." Anti-Cosmo jumped up and sat on the rail beside the genie's hand. "Say, did you hear? I'm pregnant! Or, well," he managed through a nervous chuckle, "that is to say, _I'm_ not pregnant anymore, but you understand."

"And thus the breeder becomes the bred." Norm finally turned around and rubbed Anti-Cosmo's scruffy hair with his palm. "Who's the mother? Wanda Prime? Hey, speaking of which, I saw her at Fairy Idol and told her you'd love having her over for dinner sometime."

Anti-Cosmo caught his breath. "What did she say to that?"

"You're a creep and the next time she catches you staring at her wings, she's going to stuff you in Sunnie's temple and set the place alight. Not sure how she plans to do that when, as I recall, he's the _water_ nature spirit, but hey. So, I'm guessing the kid's not hers."

"Um. No, not exactly…"

That earned him a sarcastic whistle. "She shot you down _again?_ Hey, hey, hey, triple combo bonus."

Anti-Cosmo scuffed the air once with his shoe, thoughtfully, then shook his head and wings at the same time. His knees tightened around the railing. "You really ought to come by my Castle while you're out of your lamp like this, chap, so I can introduce you to my wife properly. Anti-Wanda is a true gem, and I do so love her far more than I've loved any other woman. Oh, you need to meet her. She's quick and graceful when she moves, with that thick curl in her pegasustail bobbing against the back of her neck with a constant pleasant rustle. She tells such marvelous stories regarding her travels through the three Regions of Hy-Brasil, she's absolutely adorable when she eats, and-"

"Toot toot, folks, we are now approaching the tunnel of love. All passengers who didn't sign up to hear the goopy revelries of the smitten may disembark now. But hey, I'll grab my scrapbook from my other pants and you can slap in the deets."

Miffed, Anti-Cosmo trailed off. He reached for his monocle. "Well, yes, anyhow… Enough about me. I'm same old, same old, and busy as ever. You know we Fairykind don't change half as fast as Genies do. But tell me about you! I haven't seen your face in person for ages. Last I did see, you were singing your heart out on that Fairy Idol stage. Really, North, I'm surprised at you. A genie elbowing his way to Fairy freedom with the talents of his voice? Untraditional, and very much your style. Clever, clever boy."

Norm stretched his arms above his head. "Yeah, and probably for the best it didn't work out. Magical backup and I have an understanding. Now it's back to the daily grind for me. At least while I may get saddled with foolish little kids smearing their greedy fingerprints all over my lamp, I get compensated by the freedom to get around while they go off to school or settle into bed. These last few days, I've been having fun."

"Making your mother proud, I hope," Anti-Cosmo said, raising his voice above the music.

"Oh fez no," the genie said with a glittering laugh. He leaned his back on the rail, elbows propped. "But also yes. I'm hardly the philanthropist she wanted, and by this point I'm sure she'd rather I ticked some master off to the point of wishing up a volcano and dropping my lamp inside it, but make no mistake- I have been researching my roots. Sure, Earth is full of selfish idiots and these chilly cloudlands aren't exactly my ancestors' home planet, but I'm making the most if it- pretending to be free. I'll say one thing for this sugarcoated nightmare of a sky-country: if nothing else, it doesn't rain up here. Much. Seattle is a nightmare that way." He shrugged. "I've been meeting ladies. Enjoying my limited freedom. Attending parties that don't require a lot of sitting around and being boring. Nightclubs are much more fun than backstage at Fairy Idol."

"Skye would like that," Anti-Cosmo said honestly. "You living like you're free. Oh, Norm, if she were here to see you how big you've grown…"

"Then I'd just get her standard lecture about how genies were gifted unlimited power to benefit the other races of the universe, how I'd catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and that if I played nicer with the humans, one of them would have wished me free by now. No offense, but I'd rather hear the spiel from a girl in my arms than one on my family tree." He glanced down. "Y'know, you can just ask me straight out. I remember that look, and this time I'm not going to wait around until you explode."

"DoyouhavebabycandlesyetandifsocanIholdthem?" Anti-Cosmo asked in a single burst.

"Baby candles, huh?" Norm pretended to think about it. "Uh, nope, no idea. I try to make a point not to get too cozy with the same girl twice in the same few millennia, if you catch my drift. I can't be held responsible for what I don't know I did."

"Oh," the anti-fairy murmured, deflating. He slipped from the railing back to the floor.

Norm shrugged. "I'm not a family man, Solomon. I'd sooner adopt a kid I already liked than risk raising a baby I won't. Guess the spoiled apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Speaking of spoiled, and avoiding mention of your hair, has my dad been back to the Castle since the last time our paths crossed?"

At that, Anti-Cosmo bit his lip. Norm slid his shades down his nose.

"You know, you've either gotta fix that flick in your left ear when you're thinking up a lie, or you've got to tell my old man to jump off Plane 24."

"I know, I know! But by smoke, he's brilliant at evading my locks. I've even gotten in the habit of sprinkling smoof around the window, but it hardly seems to keep him out. At this point it seems the smartest thing I could do is simply outlast him through to his old age." Anti-Cosmo stamped his foot. "Oooh, that rascal! He's the only genie I've ever known who could slip inside the lamp of a doe between masters and out again just as easily."

"See, now that would be a useful trick to know. Wish you'd tell me who he is so I can tell him 'Hi' if I ever see him around."

The words hung in the air between genie and anti-fairy before upbeat party music swept them away. When a minute had passed, Norm rolled his eyes and pushed his shades back into place with his pinky.

"Riiight, I see the ol' Mr. Pushypat Doormat I knew and loved took off on vacation. Some time ago, from the looks of it. See, this is the sort of thing marriage does to you. Marriage to a dimwitted wanderer who has to be fetched back every time she strays too far out alone and has teeth that could pry open a soda bottle especially."

Anti-Cosmo tightened his fists. "Insulting my wife will earn you no favors. My decision stands, Norman. Short of a wish, you shan't hear his name from me."

A snort. "Hey, keep telling me that and maybe one day I'll forgive you. Someday I'll succeed in urging one of my more sensitive masters to wish me up one of those pedigree charts you so lovingly filled out for me and my ancestors. Or a DNA test; I'm not picky. As usual you're delaying my problems, not solving them. You're just lucky freedom is the bigger priority of mine right now." Norm shrugged again then, the movement sending his tail flicking between the table and Anti-Cosmo's feet. "Hey, at least tell me if you've found a couple more of my sisters in recent centuries. Tracking down available ladies is hard - and finding ladies I actually _like_ is harder - without me having to automatically swear off any girl with a bluey-purple tail."

Anti-Cosmo thought for a second and told him. Norm snapped his fingers, and a list of the names appeared on a yellow notepad in his hand. He glanced over to ensure its correctness, then pocketed it inside his vest. "You know I'm placing all my trust in you, right? If you're making any of this up, I'll have to twist one of my latest master's thousand wishes and play it right so she stumbles across you in the middle of, I dunno, shooting pigeons out of the sky or something. Whatever it is you do that makes you feel like a criminal mastermind. Taking a mallet to her mother's back? Looking like the bad guy either way."

"Good smoke, North, that's enough! I only saw you tonight and thought we'd catch up for old times' sake. Yet I see you're regrettably as bitter and untrusting as ever, and after all I've done for you." Anti-Cosmo's fingers felt for the nonexistent sheath at his waist again. "I don't much care for your insinuations about my dishonesty, nor do I much like the words you've said about my wife. Of all the things I wish I'd been brave enough to tell you back when you were younger, I do wish I would have disciplined you enough that you could control your tongue!"

Norm put his hands into the air. "Chill, chillytoes. And remember, I don't grant wishes for fellow magic-users. But okay. The next time I meet one of your less than dignified friends, I'll keep my mouth shut."

Anti-Sanderson chose that moment to materialize on Anti-Cosmo's left and knock on his skull with a fist. "I think you cinched those _canetis_ rings a bit too tight, bean dip. We've been waiting for you ove' there and I've been calling, but you didn't come and then I actually got up to fetch you back. Take foreve' day. Free drinks don't get 'emselves sloshed. Hey, who's your friend? One of your basement buds?" His dirty hand shot out for a shake… or maybe a sniff. You never knew with him. "Hi, currybreath. I'm Hap, and you know it."

Norm stared at the anti-pixie, an audible hum burning on his lips as he drank in the short stature, the chubby figure, the scruffy green fur, the cowlicked electric blond hair, the red and yellow jacket, the star-spattered navy hat, the cracked sunglasses, the perky party blower, the plaque-speckled fangs, the bright blue undershirt, the pink and orange necktie, the ripped purple pants, the drooping flying fox wings, the mismatched gray and white shoes, the smell of wet coin sith, and sound of screeching brakes swirling about his personal imprint. His violet eyes shut. Then they opened again, and he swiveled back around to Anti-Cosmo. "Annnd… that's my cue. I think I'd better flit."

"Don't be a stranger," Anti-Cosmo muttered as his fingers snapped.

 _Canetis_ rings or not, he didn't miss the sarcasm when Norm called, "Hey, you know me too well."

He vanished with a ringing _gong_.

"Huh. What a weirdo." Anti-Sanderson stared at the spot where the genie had been, then grabbed Anti-Cosmo's arm. "C'mon Blue, you're missing all the fun. It's your party and you'll come if I want you."

Anti-Cosmo allowed himself to be dragged off to the VIP booth and pushed down on a bench that curled around a glass table in a semi-circle. The seats were cushy and soft, like creepy animal fur blankets. It was divided into five colored sections. His place was blue and black, between the green and yellow on his left and the gray on his right. A metal bucket filled with ice rested on the table next to a dish of straight white sugar. Stacked between them were three menus listing various drinks, cakes, candy, and (thankfully) actual serious meals, whether for breakfast, lunch, or supper. Jorgen and H.P. were still sitting there, talking politics as they shuffled playing cards. This ended abruptly when the two Unseelie Courters arrived. The cards got shoved to the side and hungry eyes turned all attention on Anti-Cosmo.

"Took you long enough," Jorgen rumbled. "I was almost about to begin punching unbreakable objects to express my rage."

"Ah… your patience is appreciated." Anti-Cosmo considered mentioning Norm's name and his long history with the genie's family line, then didn't. He'd heard of Fairy Idol only in spurts while he'd been wandering Fairy World with his stomach still sore from the impromptu fagiggly gland transplant, searching for food and clothes or a kindly wand wave. While he didn't know all the details, he seemed to recall Norm and Jorgen having a spat that had resulted in the former's removal from his newfound godparent position. No, best not to mention that.

Slinging an arm around Anti-Cosmo's shoulders, Anti-Sanderson flopped onto the bench beside him. "Hey, so Jorgen brought baby bottles in keepin' with our night's theme, and now that we're all here we're gonna fill 'em all with soda. Pick a flavor from the bucket and we'll have a race to see who downs the whole thing first. I'll win, of course. I always win."

Anti-Cosmo pushed the offered cooler away with a claw. Condensation leaked across his fur. "I'm here for a good breakfast and good company. You all know pe _rrr_ fectly well that I don't drink."

"Aw, what? Not even t'night?"

Jorgen plunged his hand into the ice bucket and felt around until he came up with a can of grape. "That is understandable. You are not even three feet tall, you lightweight blueberry."

Instantly Anti-Cosmo was on his feet. "I am 2'11" by your inferior Seelie measuring system!"

"Yes," H.P. said, leaning an elbow against the table, "and according to my records, your wife is 3'4."

Anti-Sanderson laughed and scrubbed the back of Anti-Cosmo's hair. "I keep fo'getting I'm an inch shorter than this li'l guy, and I just look taller 'cuz of my cowlicks and hat. Look, he's cute."

Anti-Cosmo rubbed his brow above his monocle. The Head Pixie was just over four feet tall, forehead included- there was no winning this fight. Sitting down again and tucking his heels beneath the bench, he said, "You wouldn't much like me sugarloaded anyway, I think. I'm not a very excitable person when I've had a tad too many cookies. I'm one of those fellows who will slur and cry until he falls asleep."

The Head Pixie patted his shoulder. "I'm truly sorry. Now, Jorgen, toss me that can of cherry and let's get wasted."

"Before you do that," chirped a feminine voice from the booth behind them, her words dripping down on their heads, "may I have your boys' attention for a moment, please?"

All fingers froze.

Even without looking up, Anti-Cosmo's sharp ears identified the speaker down to her subspecies. At least, he was quite sure they did… they'd never been wrong before… and if any of her kind were going to slip down to the Deep Kingdom - into a club of all places - then it would be, well… her. Her fellows were content to mill among each other, their various tribes content with fully equal political and social standing, but the woman in question had clawed herself a position of authority where one had previously never existed. Though hardly a rebel by his own people's definition, Anti-Cosmo did have to acknowledge that if anyone from the High Kingdom would lack enough shame to set claw in a nightclub like this one, this smug damsel did.

She did own the place, after all.

The rustling of feathers had been his first clue regarding her identity. With but a few exceptions in cases such as the feathered cherubs and the leathery white wings of the barbegazi, Fairies shared their wings with insects. Anti-Fairies took those of bats. But her people had birds to thank for their ability to fly. They ranged from falcons to wrens to even flamingos and ostriches, but if he remembered correctly (and he knew he did), the heavy wings folded along her particular back could be traced back to the great horned owl. It left them a bit closer to dull brown than the shining gold her people were known for, but she more than made up for that with her personal… charm. As Anti-Cosmo twisted around to blink up at her, carefully adjusting his braided wedding band so the dark blue gem in its center gleamed in plain sight, he straightened his shoulders.

"Ah. Chief Sunchosen. What an… unanticipated surprise. Whatever is a Fairy Refract like you doing down here?"

Dame Artemis Cairo lacked the familiar mustache he knew from her anti-nix counterpart, of course, but the high cheekbones of her feathered white face and the dancing red eyes were hauntingly familiar from the last time their paths had crossed. Instead of the traditional pink or purple robes for her sex, she dressed full-length in silver. Or her clothes were full-length so long as she was around other members of her race, anyway; at the moment, one of her bare white shoulders was exposed down to the wrist. The silver accented the brassy sheen of her thick, short curls rather nicely (Not that he was looking). Each coil rippled and glinted like waves against the shore. Her arms might be dangling over the booth seat, but her movements were not loose in the flowing way that Anti-Sanderson's were. No, even in a place like this, she remained stiff and refined, like a statue in Rome. As Anti-Cosmo shifted closer to the Head Pixie, who had gone tense beside him, Dame Artemis tipped her tall white crown before leaning forward.

"Well boys, it's the darndest thing. Get this: I heard four of the six major executives of the cloudlands were all… having a party? At my place? And you… forgot to invite me to join in again, I guess?"

"We didn't think you'd be interested," the Head Pixie blurted as he slipped his baby bottle beneath the table, at the same time Jorgen said, "It was so spur of the moment," and Anti-Sanderson summarized their mutual feelings with, "No offense, rosycurls, but you're way judgmental and you always make us feel gross about being drakes."

Dame Artemis laced her long talons, painted with gold polish like her hair, together under her chin. She didn't even bat an eye. The ends of her mouth curled almost to the tips of her pointed ears. "Forgive my intrusion, good sirs. I only happened to be making my usual rounds when one of my owls informed me you were on your way. Four political leaders traveling across the cloudlands as a single unit rarely goes unnoticed. I got curious. What's the occasion?"

None of them moved. Anti-Sanderson had stuck his claw through the top of the orange cream soda can a moment ago and not removed it. In the silence weighing down on the booth, it made a long, low, wheezing _fssssssh_.

"I'm pregnant," Anti-Cosmo said as the quiet suddenly became too deafening for his ears to handle. He gripped the top button of his borrowed shirt in his fist, fighting the urge to hunker down in his seat. "O-or more specifically, my wife was, hence why she didn't come. We were - are - having a drake."

"Getting sloshed is a good way to prepare for that kind of emotional stress," Dame Artemis agreed with a sagely nod.

Jorgen put both fists on the glass table with a thunk and stood up. "Little girl, you do not tell us what to do in our free time. We have caused no ruckus and so as the boss of the establishment, you should not be over here. We did not invite you."

With a squeak, Dame Artemis vanished below the booth wall. She reappeared on their side of it and quietly slunk onto the end of the bench beside Anti-Sanderson. "Hey, I'm not upset. Sorry, sir. I just thought I'd ask and find out if we could hang. Maybe get a little wasted on the side. I pole dance here on Wednesdays, you know." When no one smiled, she dropped her gaze to her clasped hands and made an uncertain clucking noise in the back of her throat. "Okay. Um. Me being the cool fun queen aside, I really do wanna talk to you guys."

"What about?" H.P. asked, placing his hand to his right hip.

Dame Artemis followed his movement with her eyes. "Why wouldn't they have taken your-? Ah. The key to your cloudcar. Smaaart. But don't bother threatening me, sir. The rent-a-locker thing up front is just a way to make some easy lagelyn off the idiots who are too bright to want to risk a classic case of _Mintwave v. Wandflick_ but too dumb to smuggle their stars in. With the sole exception of my master wand, magic doesn't even work within these walls."

Anti-Cosmo glanced to his left at Anti-Sanderson. From the way the anti-pixie mouthed, _She's bluffing,_ Anti-Cosmo could tell they were both thinking of Norm.

"No magic that draws power from the Big Wand's energy field, sir," Dame Artemis corrected impatiently, never taking her eyes from H.P.'s face. "That excludes, to name a few non-comprehensive examples, genies, nature spirit zodiacs, the Principle of Observation, the Anti-Fairy mind-meld, my scrying thing, the honey-lock, the core-sync, the influence of yoo-doo dolls, and the sheer power of our Aos Sí ancestors themselves. I'm not _that_ rich."

Anti-Cosmo's fingertips roamed to the place where a certain blue gem on his cravat normally lay against his neck. "What abou' breathing?" Anti-Sanderson asked. "Are we allowed ta breathe inside the Lounge?"

"Breathing is fine, sir."

"What abou' kiff-tying with a damsel?"

Her lower eyelid twitched. "Kiff-tying with a damsel is fine too, sir, though I recommend you remove yourselves to a private place if you're going to do that. And I have a strict bring-your-own-sterilized-knives policy. In whose smoky company a fellow Unseelie Courter chooses to… regenerate is none of my business. Head Pixie, sir?" Dame Artemis gestured to the table with her hand. "I know I'm being forward, but could I please ask you to place your weapon in the open where I can see it? I'd feel more comfortable talking to you that way."

H.P. lifted his usual eyebrow. "Why? It won't work in here."

"No, sir. If it's connected to the energy field projected by the Big Wand, no it won't. Unless, maybe, you're working on a way to contain the energy of the aforementioned Big Wand as a portable unit and using your own starpiece as a prototype for this advancement in technology? Hypothetically?"

Anti-Cosmo heard the soft click of the Head Pixie's teeth adjusting in his mouth. His clothes rustled around the neck. "Hypothetically."

"Perhaps _very_ hypothetically, sir?"

H.P. didn't move. Then he did. He slammed his phone on the table and wrenched open the rear panel. Jorgen hissed. Anti-Sanderson cringed in silent sympathy. Anti-Cosmo only blinked.

Dame Artemis leaned forward again, her tongue curled against the inside of her cheek. "Oh… Abracadabrium batteries. Yes sir, those are rare. And regrettably too impractical for a mass-produced power source because of that."

"You've got abra-bats?" Anti-Cosmo whispered.

"It's only a prototype," the Head Pixie muttered back. "A lousy prototype for an idea that worked better on paper than in practice. But we did get the P.A.W.S. out of it, so at least it wasn't a total waste of resources."

"Beg pardon?"

"Previously-Activated Wand Systems. Useful for _ping_ ing documents straight into the digi-stream. Tell you later."

Dame Artemis clicked the panel back into place and pushed the cell phone in front of the Head Pixie. "I only wanted a look, sir. Keep it. I trust you. Now, I hate to drop anybody's self-esteem - you know I hate doing that - but I didn't float over here just because I like you guys. Oh, vapor no. Actually, I've been here every night for the past few weeks hoping I could catch you because something happened a few yea- er, months ago that really bothers me."

Jorgen pricked his ears. "Bothers you how? Can it be vaporized with my big glowing staff?"

She leaned away. "Ooh, I'm sorry, sir. I was going to tell allll of you about it, but the High Count is the only one here who's ever been nice to me, so I'm gonna put all my eggs in his basket on this one." So saying, she stood and motioned to Anti-Cosmo with a coaxing gold talon. "You got a minute to chat with me in private, High Count, sir?"

Anti-Cosmo brought his eyebrows together. The Refracted were arguably more opposite his people than either of them were opposite their shared Primary counterparts in the Seelie Court. Whereas his race were known to be mischievous (and yes, occasionally, evil), hers treasured peace and piety. The Refracted had withdrawn to the higher planes of existence eons ago to work their farms and fawn over religious beliefs they couldn't prove. Dame Artemis included, only rarely did they stray down here where the atmosphere was thicker and the sky glowed with stars instead of sunlight. Even when the occasional Refract did, it was to speak with people like, well… Jorgen. The Head Pixie. Seelie Courters who practiced Daoism and the like.

But not him. The strange Refracted damsel who ran a sugar-filled nightclub down on Plane 5 and coyly teased anyone, species disregarding, who would give her the time of evening had never once before had anything to say to the strange Anti-Fairy drake who rejected soda and candy bars and the practice of keeping mistresses entirely. This was odd indeed. _I've been here every night for the past few weeks,_ she'd told them _._ Yes, something about the whole situation suggested Dame Artemis hadn't swung by her club just to sneak the sugary treats her people nearly as whole despised.

Well. She'd probably do that while she was in the neighborhood too, actually.

Sure enough, when he muttered an apology to his fellows (and suggested they enjoy themselves without him) and then followed Dame Artemis to another roped-off nook across the balcony, she twisted off the lid to a grape soda bottle. "I get free drinks, sir," she explained as she poured herself a shot. "Chief perks. I'd hate to let 'em go to waste."

"Sunchosen, you naughty damsel," Anti-Cosmo scolded, forcing a playful tone into his voice as he sat. She remained standing. "You, good woman, consuming sugar. For shame."

"L _iii_ sten, I'm ambitious and unrepentant. I've never exactly been like the majority of my people, sir. That's why I'm the one who decided to unite a couple of our more lenient tribes into one and name myself their Chief." She brought the shot glass to her lips and wiggled her eyebrows. "I hang out in the Deep Kingdom because I _like_ material possessions and having fun. That's what comes of having a counterpart who decided his true calling in life was to become a monk. You know how it goes."

"You've got a grape soda mustache," he told her when she put the glass down.

"Thank you. Now, sir, we should talk about serious business."

Anti-Cosmo fiddled with his wedding band again. The fabric of the nook seat was cracked and stained. Dame Artemis hovered on her toes beside him… blocking his exit route. "Look here, dame. If this is about not being invited to the Fairy World Games, you can speak with Jorgen and I'm sure he'd be happy to let your people participate next year."

Dame Artemis laughed and clicked her shot glass back on the table. Finally, she wiped the stain above her lip with the sun-shaped pendant on her necklace. "I wish I could, sir, I really do, but I wouldn't be able to get a team together. We Refracts are all" - she made jazz hands - "equal and above pride and pettiness and junk. Contests are 'beneath us' and 'introduce discontent among the ranks'."

"Pity. The two Unseelie Court classes head to head against the two Seelie ones. It would have been good fun."

"It would have. But if I can sell my people on the idea, you'll be the first to know. Now, please open up that laptop over there by your elbow, sir. I want to show you something freaky."

Anti-Cosmo's experience with computers had been a long one of headaches and wand blasts. Typically, that was how it went with him and technology. There were other camarilla members who could navigate the Internet and avoid viruses in the process. He was a man of a simpler time. Regardless, he did as Dame Artemis requested. He even managed to boot it up without any assistance. Now, how about that?

"Please sir, don't squeal on me to the other Refracts for having this," Dame Artemis said, leaning over his shoulder to tap out her password. "I had to place a special order with H.P. and have some guys smuggle it up to the Dame Head's mill. _And_ I had to wrench it out of your counterpart's hands. She and your wife's man are always slipping onto the merchant ships like rats and scampering off with stolen cargo. No offense, sir."

"None taken. But…" He fingered the pink cord that trailed into the wall. "I thought it was honeywheat fields, prairies, and forests for kilometers up there on your Planes. Where do you charge it?"

"Don't. Why did you think I come down here so often? You guys have the outlets. Also, why didn't you follow me back on Krystell, sir? Anti-Sanderson followed me back, and Anti-Pixie Isle doesn't even get digi-stream reception." She clicked her tongue. "I hate pretending I'm happy not having the stuff you guys take for granted. The Deep Kingdom Planes are so much more fun. Ah, here! Yeah, there we go." She tilted the screen in his direction and stood back, hands on her hips. "This is your castle, right?"

Anti-Cosmo stared at the laptop for almost an entire minute in complete silence. Tall cinderstone walls loomed against a sky more maroon than scarlet given the position of Earth's Sun below. Coils of barbed wire slithered among the ashy black clouds. Anti-Elliot lingered in one of the castle's turrets, his wand extended through the window and his eyes utterly focused on the quiet drawbridge below. The image was frozen, and obviously outdated. Today (Yesterday in his time zone) was Saturday. Saturn's day of the week. The two camarilla representatives for Fire on the zodiac were on guard duty tonight- Anti-Scarlett at the gate and Anti-Julian in the tower. With his knuckle, Anti-Cosmo guided the trackpad to the center of the video, where the play button rested, and kept the cursor hovering. "How did you get this feed?"

Dame Artemis crossed her arms. "What? Did you forget which race invented scrying bowls and crystal balls in the first place, sir? High Count, we're the bird people. Seeing stuff from far away is our specialty; I stalk some of the really mint people I follow on Krystell personally. And after you watch this, maybe you'll thank me for it, sir. This _is_ your castle, right?"

"Yes…"

"Okay. Watch this, sir, and then hug me and kiss me and assure me that I'm just being paranoid again." She pressed a key and the video sprang into action. A gnat flitted across the screen with a soft buzzing of wings. More than a few voices wafted out from the Castle dining room, all of them pestering Anti-Wanda for details about her latest excursion to the Far West Region. He heard his own high voice assuring them that questions could be answered as soon as she settled in. Even watching the video with a hazy recollection of what was coming, Anti-Cosmo found himself chuckling as his sweet wife joked that her wanderlust wouldn't let her settle anywhere as long as she lived, so all except her Anti-Cozzie might be sitting on their questions until the day they went to smoke, and the entire camarilla erupted in laughter. Then their voices died away. Only the scratching of silverware on glass plates permeated the air.

And then the picturesque scene went wrong.

There was no smoke cloud. No flash. No whirlwind. No ripple. No slit in the sky or lightning in the distance. And most concerningly for a being who relied so heavily upon his ears, there was no sound at all. Not a _poof_ or a _ping_ or a _foop_ or a _gong_ or a _zing_ or a _pong_ or a _pop_. Simply, one second all was still and quiet. His castle rested on its plot of gray cloud, surrounded by a moat of emptiness that dropped directly down to Earth (or at least it would if Jorgen hadn't rerouted it to deposit anyone who fell there directly into a snug prison cell). Now that the Barrier was down, politely bringing up this annoyance to the Council was Anti-Cosmo's next political goal. One he would probably never succeed in, but, well.

The next second, a large white shape blinked into existence on the left-hand side of the screen. It seemed to be about four meters above solid ashes, and it landed with a heavy thump out of sight.

"What?" he muttered, leaning forward now.

"Wait for it."

The screen swiveled to track the movement. Moving, Anti-Cosmo noticed, with a startled bob and twist not unlike the neck of a bird. A bird sitting in a tree, with a stunned white… mass lying at the base of the trunk. "Did you slip one of your scrying owls into Anti-Fairy World to spy on me?" he whispered, and Dame Artemis whispered back, "You're more fun than H.P. because it's harder to hide owls outside skyscraper windows without arousing suspicion, sir, now hush."

"I'm going to catch that owl and stuff it in my storeroom eventually, you know."

"I said hush."

The white shape pulled itself into a sitting position and wrapped its arms around its knees. Crouching that way made it difficult to determine its true size. The owl-cam shifted its talons and slunk closer to the trunk of the tree. Black leaves rustled. It let out a low hoot. At that, the shape looked up. The scrying owl absorbed the details of its face, which was undoubtedly human. But other than that, Anti-Cosmo couldn't make out the foggiest detail past the thick safety goggles perched on his nose. Apart from a purple backpack, the figure was, entirely, bundled in a thick white coat with its fuzzy hood pulled up and over his hair. Being an Anti-Fairy and built to survive the cold climate of Hy-Brasil, he didn't recognize the style immediately. What was it? A parka? A clear tube snaked from the insides of the backpack and ended between his lips, like a straw as thick as Anti-Cosmo's own arm.

Then, before Anti-Cosmo could open his mouth to comment on the curious apparatus, the figure twitched backwards and disappeared as suddenly as he had come. A few quiet seconds passed. The video blinked to an end. The play button reappeared in the center of the screen, with a countdown timer warning it would soon begin again.

"So?" Dame Artemis asked, looking at him.

"… Uh…"

She sat down on the other side of the table. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was a human, sir. A human drake, in Anti-Fairy World. The first time I saw this, I thought, "Okay, that's a bit weird, but maybe he fell out of the tree, then stepped backwards and fell down a snake hole. You've got some pretty big orange snakes in your place, right? Right. But then I got to thinking. Wouldn't your gate guard have told you if a human had come in from Fairy World, sir?"

"Immediately," Anti-Cosmo agreed, pressing his claws to his temples. "I… I don't understand. Anti-Elliot not seeing him from the tower I can perhaps forgive. But Anti-Kanin was on gate duty. He would have alerted me at once had someone so strange come by. He… he's my _best friend._ Has been since we were pups. He'd never keep that sort of secret from me!"

Dame Artemis watched him quietly until he finished. She nudged the soda bottle in his direction, but Anti-Cosmo pushed it back. "I won't lie, High Count. I'm freaking out. You and I both saw how he showed up without either a _poof_ cloud or a sound. And that drake looked way too old for godparents anyway. Yet if I didn't know better, sir, I'd swear it looked like he teleported. In and out. Whoosh. If humans have found a way to breach the cloudlands without taking the Bridges, that's a problem, sir. For all of us."

The video played the human's strange entrance again. Anti-Cosmo stared at it, not speaking, until it had finished. Then he said, softly, "Let's not tell anyone about this yet, hm? I don't want Jorgen or Hap getting any ideas that this has something to do with my own lack of security."

"I understand." Dame Artemis shut the laptop and kept her hand resting on top of it. "But I think you should know something else, sir."

"Well?"

"I don't want to alarm you, but a few years… months… some time ago, a human did appear on Boudacia and cause a bit of a stir. I heard he - or she - didn't bat an eye at anyone, and they left as quickly as they'd come. I was down here in Serentip one evening just like this one when I heard, and I didn't think much of it. But it's weird, don't you think, sir? First a human appears on Boudacia. Now a human pays an impromptu visit to Anti-Fairy World through non-Fairykind means."

Anti-Cosmo bit his lip to keep from leaping to his feet and screaming at the stars. Humans with teleportation abilities, unrestrained by the universal laws which forced members of the Seelie Court to halt at the Divide gate's port of entry on their way through to Hy-Brasil? His people might very soon be in danger of capture and torture- or at the very least, he had a long eternity ahead of him to spend fishing fallen humans out of some of the more dangerous bits of his home. "Tarrow spare us," he managed. His claws left scours in the wood of the table. "Could the Boudacians have accidentally picked him up and teleported him there in the first place?"

Dame Artemis pulled one foot into her lap. "Boudacians don't possess teleportation technology. I checked with a very reliable source, sir. Their focus is on weaponry and defense. Even their ships are known for power, not speed. Some of the slowest in the cosmos."

"Chief Sunchosen, while I empathize with your concern, if that rumor spread years or months or some time before this incident with my Castle, the odds are high they aren't connected." He said it mostly to convince himself, and Anti-Cosmo had a sneaking suspicion that she could tell he was wracking his brain for alternative solutions.

She upturned her hands, talons glinting in the blue and purple lights. "Let's say it is a godkid. If so, Amity Angel would have records, right?"

"Every godparent fills out a monthly report of all their godchild's wishes. Oh, but they'd never let me in there. You have to complete the proper training." Anti-Cosmo pulled a face. "Certainly I've heard that an anti-fairy or two have claimed jobs there since the Barrier went down, but the Amity Safety and Protective Recall Agencies as a whole are not precisely known for their lenience towards my kind. The Angel division would never let me wander around the human godchild wish archives without a very good explanation. While your video is certainly interesting, unless I could gather hard evidence that the human presence is threatening, I'd more likely than not get _Anti-Firebox v. Ivywish_ called on me."

"That's too bad. We Refracts don't really know how that godparent stuff works." Her face fell. Then she perked up again. "That damsel who heads Amity Angel now."

"Emery? Her counterpart was on the camarilla while I was growing up. What of her?"

"She's H.P.'s little sister or something, right? She's got the…" Dame Artemis made an up and down motion above her head to indicate the pale yellow honorary Pixie hat that had made Emery's round face, purple sweatshirt, and short black hair speckled with starry flecks of white familiar up and down the cloudlands. "Would the Pixies have access to godchild wish records through her, sir?"

Anti-Cosmo considered this. "Well. I imagine they help with all her paperwork, the way they help with everyone's. They keep copies of every document to ever pass through their hands down in that undercloud library of theirs. The Labyrinth, they call it, and for good reason. I've visited the place only once before and I'd still be wandering there if it weren't for my wand. On that topic, I don't trust the elevator. The cables that _rrr_ un it are overflowing with magic, and they'd snap if you so much as risked a wand wave."

"There you go. If they've got the wish records, the Pixies could help you find it."

Anti-Cosmo leaned back. "Why me and not you? You are the one who seems to have more information about this human on Boudacia business than I."

Dame Artemis blinked. Then she pressed her lips together. "Well, it was your Castle. And I don't want to be the one to ask him. I swear, every time H.P. looks at me, I can see him undressing me with his eyes or some junk. Now that the Barriers are down, digi-stream searches about High Kingdom real estate are trending and everyone knows he's had his greedy eyes on our open land for ages. Last time he got drunk here, he spent the night trying to bribe me to marry Drake Sanderson, I think. Or I'm being the annoying paranoid one again, but I don't like it either way. Oh vapor, I'm not supposed to be sitting down! I _always_ forget that!" She sprang up, frantically brushing off her silver skirts,

"I didn't want to bring your attention to it," Anti-Cosmo said, watching her panic with a thin cord of amusement.

Dame Artemis gave up on her robes and blew two bright gold curls out of her eyes. "When there's a risk of me getting cornered into marriage every time our paths cross, I'd feel weird asking him. But you and the Head Pixie are tight, sir. I mean, look. You're even… wearing his shirt?"

"It was- a gift." Anti-Cosmo wrung his hands beneath the table, then rose to his wings. "Thank you for letting me in on this, Chief Sunchosen, but I have got to return to the others or they'll wonder if you've dragged me off someplace to confess my sins. Should I hear a word about rogue godchildren, I'll scry you immediately."

Dame Artemis released the magic she'd clamped in her mouth with a sigh of relief. Her wings drooped. "I wanted to talk to you because Drake Jorgen thinks I'm too young to be taken seriously and Anti-Sanderson's figured out what my owls do and he throws things at them. If he's that upset with them, I don't want to know what he thinks about me. But I like you, High Count. You get things." She held up three talons. "Human. Teleporting. Cloudland security breach. I know there's a lot of other stuff going on here tonight, but don't forget, okay? It might be important."

"I'll bring it up at the next Council meeting."

"Thanks. Enjoy your party. If you get bored, hunt me down and I'll do what I can to keep you entertained. Don't forget, sir, you're the High Count. Until sunrise, your drinks are on me." She drew an ivory wand from her one sleeve and tapped it against her laptop. It, the pink charging cord, her soda bottle, and shot glass all vanished with an audible _pop_. Anti-Cosmo twitched his nose, but resisted the urge to sneeze as cool, silky Refracted magic washed over his face. With one last tip of her crown, Dame Artemis sauntered away towards the stairs. Every patron gave her a wide berth. The golden brown tail feathers peeking from beneath her robes swished across the floor as she went.

A human. A human in the cloudlands only Rhoswen knew how. What pleasant news to receive while he was still in mourning.

When Anti-Cosmo returned to the roped-off booth where he had left his companions, he first found Anti-Sanderson lying on the ground, wondering aloud over and over again what would happen if a pixie whose saliva cleared the mind came in contact with an anti-pixie whose saliva inhibited it. His final consensus appeared to be that they'd affect each other. Anti-Cosmo studied him with distaste as he floated past, and hoped that although the bouncer had let them through without a second thought, and although Dame Artemis had insisted her wand alone worked inside the Lounge, that one of the others had stripped Anti-Sanderson of his plastic wand anyway. He wasn't in the mood to argue _Mintwave v. Wandflick_ and _Anti-Gonzo v. Fairy World_ with any of the Keepers patrolling Serentip's streets tonight.

"Anti-Cosmo," Jorgen greeted as he neared. He had his fist wrapped around an entire barrel of sugary liquid that looked suspiciously like the ones that were supposed to be stuck to the wall by the soda fountain at the downstairs bar. Anti-Cosmo decided not to ask.

"What did Dame Moodkill have to say to you behind our backs?" H.P. asked. His tone was disinterested, his words as calm as ever, but as he refilled his baby bottle with a fresh can of orange soda, his eyes glittered hard and cold.

Anti-Cosmo shook his head. "Oh, nothing at all pleasant. It would only put a damper on our evening, so I'll tell you later. Feel free to head down and enjoy yourselves. After all, you paid for it."

H.P. continued to study him. He'd finished pouring his refill, but he didn't seem to notice he was still holding the empty can above the bottle. "You know I enjoy dancing. But it would be rude to leave you up here. You don't like soda. You only touch one cookie every dozen. You seemed insistent earlier that you have no interest in watching the… entertainers. What exactly do you plan to do, presumably alone, while we 'enjoy ourselves'?"

"First?" Anti-Cosmo picked up his discarded menu and opened it to the first page. "I'm going to treat myself to a breakfast of crepes filled with fresh High Kingdom berries and bananas, and I think I might even sprinkle a bit of powdered sugar on top. Then I shall _foop_ in a stack of novels I've long been anxious to get to and make the most of my stress-free morning. I've been sleeping at odd hours this last month and I'm feeling rested up, so don't worry I'll fall asleep on you."

Jorgen scoffed. "Anti-Cosmo, we did not pitch in to get a fancy-schmancy all-important VIP table reservation just for you to spend the evening curled up with a little book like a total pansy."

"I'm certain your funds will all recover."

H.P. rolled his eyes.

"We could play strip snapjik," Anti-Sanderson chirped, sitting up.

Lowering his soda barrel, Jorgen nudged the anti-pixie with the toe of his boot. "That is hardly fun when two of you have fur."

This time, Anti-Sanderson sprang right up on the table, his party blower tucked between his fangs. He pointed two thumbs at his chest. "Hi-ho, heeey oh! Everybody listen! We'll be starting us a strip snapjik game in just a couple a' minutes, and the pot is open donation. All onlooker contributions go straight t' helping poor orphaned pups and jobless anti-pixies in Anti-Fairy World."

A few murmurs sprang up on the edges of Anti-Cosmo's hearing. He caught more than one anti-fairy damsel looking his way… along with some damsels who weren't precisely of his Class. "Oh my smoke," he mumbled, pressing his face into his hands. He slid down his seat until he was far more under the glass table than sitting beside it. "The _u_ niverse will re _fu_ se to let me live this down. I have made poor choices and I regret my friends."

"I will settle this," Jorgen muttered, and grabbed Anti-Sanderson by the scruff of his neck. The two left in the direction of the loo, Anti-Sanderson whining and blowing kisses the whole way. Amused, several onlookers trailed after them.

"Anti-Cosmo," H.P. warned through his next sip of soda, "you need to stop taking everything so seriously."

That, at least, coaxed out a grim smile, although Anti-Cosmo kept his forehead to his palms and didn't straighten up. "Hard to believe I'm actually hearing that from a pixie, old sport."

"I have never in my life denied my love for clubbing. I don't know what gave you the impression that I don't know how to party."

"You are still wearing your, ah… business suit, I notice."

H.P. glanced down at his gray clothes. "As a matter of fact, I'm not. These are my pajamas. The buttons are real, but the tie is just part of the design. It's printed on the fabric, see?" He released his collar and let it flutter back against his skin. Then he shrugged. "Sometimes I wear these to the Council meetings and no one notices."

" _I_ notice," Anti-Cosmo retorted. He finally pushed himself up. "Even Anti-Wanda notices. Right now you're wearing plain cotton, as opposed to wool. The _rrr_ ustling of the fabric sounds distinctly different, and I feel embarrassed on your behalf every time I hear you float through the door. I've simply never told you before."

"Ah. Congratulations. Now you're in on my secret." He put the baby bottle back to his mouth.

Anti-Cosmo skimmed through the menu, then looked up at the bartender behind the VIP sugar bar. Was he supposed to make some sort of signal? No one had given him one. So fortunately, the bartender came swiftly, a pen and pad at the ready. He ordered, and ten minutes later, he began to eat.

Jorgen and Anti-Sanderson did not come back. Between bites, Anti-Cosmo tapped the end of his fork against the table.

"Stop it," H.P. said suddenly, snapping out his wings. "Stop it, that's annoying. That's the most annoying thing I've ever heard."

"Hm?"

The Head Pixie leaned his arm over the back of the booth, the fabric of his particular space on the bench as gray as his pajamas. He closed his eyes and pushed his hat off with his other hand. Then he rubbed furiously at what little white hair still clung to his liver-spotted scalp. Dandruff flakes and glinting particles of purple dust fell into his lap. "I changed the password on my phone while you were gone," he said as he scratched. "Then I forgot it. Locked myself out. Don't know how we're going to drive back to the Barrier now. Can't get through the Barrier. Probably be stuck here forever. Can't _ping_ home. Hope I didn't leave Sanderson in charge again… Woke up hungover one time with Gary and Betty hugging me on their couch. Left them sleeping there and grabbed another soda but passed out again before I made it far… Couldn't bring Sanderson tonight; he'd get drunk, he can't resist sugar, has no willpower- Dust, he's weak, I miss him so much, I like him, he's neat…"

"H.P., you're sugarloaded. And going tingle-fritzy too, most probably."

H.P. replaced his hat and rolled his head around to stare at him. "I don't get sugarloaded. Not really, actually. We figured that out a long time ago- my genes don't let me. Same way I can count things. I'm good with patterns. You saw my patterns once. Anti-Fairies taste like copper and salt."

Anti-Cosmo squinted into the pixie's face. "Don't forget, old bean, I watched you behave this same way ninety millennia ago when you were our prisoner of war. Believe me, you're sugarloaded. Your eyes are unfocused and you slurred about a fifth of those words. Perhaps sugar holds less of an effect on your mind than most, but it's certainly affecting your body."

"No, it wasn't the sugar that made me do it. I'm still thinking straight. Almost got my wings notched a year after a party once when I was a juvenile. Don't tell Sanderson. He'd be mad. He's annoying when he's mad. Sanderson should marry Dame Artemis, get the High Kingdom land, the Barriers are down thanks to Turner, he yelled at Jorgen, I saw it, I was there, it was entertaining…" H.P. smacked his lips a few times, then rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and straightened up. "Ah, now my saliva is kicking in. I'm sorry. What was I saying?"

Anti-Cosmo lay his fork across his now-empty plate. "You were trying to tell me you weren't drunk."

"Oh, blitz no. I'm drunk as a huldu right now. I just can't afford to let anyone know it. Don't mind if I leave you here for a minute while I grab another soda, do you? And maybe one of those cute pink cakes. I want to sugar up my saliva again before I'm too sober to regret my decisions."

"Knock yourself out."

"You sure you ain't coming with? It's fun." He paused. Then, with a slight flush leaking into his cheeks, the pixie corrected himself with a quiet, "Aren't?"

Anti-Cosmo twitched his ears. "H.P., may I remind you that I am in mourning."

He frowned. Adjusting his glasses with two fingers, he said, "That's right. You were wearing the thing. You never said why, though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the High Count to go into mourning so publicly that they don one of those cobweb shawls you had on, it would either have to be the night before you declare war, or you just lost one of your immediate family. Your father's been dead since long before I knew you. You hate your mother, so you wouldn't be mourning her. You have a healthy wife, a baby on the way-"

"I HAD a baby on the way!" Anti-Cosmo exploded, slamming both fists against his plate as he shot up. His fork flipped into the air and clattered across the table. "I had a wonderful little son on the way until the time came for me to deliver him from my pouch to Anti-Wanda's, _and I dropped him!_ Ohh, I dropped him from the highest rung of the array while the entire camarilla watched me and even though Anti-Wanda and I instantly flew down to scoop him up and slip him inside her, he's _dead_ and it's my fault and mine alone and that's why Anti-Wanda isn't showing any signs of pregnancy yet, because I killed him and he's _not growing._ Thank you for asking!"

He stood there, leaning all his weight on his arms and heaving. Salty tears blurred his vision. He sniffled, pathetically. Distantly, he realized that Jorgen and Anti-Sanderson had finally come back. They froze just outside his line of sight, but that didn't mean he couldn't hear their noisy vocal signatures registering magically below the music.

"Do you understand anything about Anti-Fairy reproduction?" he continued in a soft way as he watched H.P. and Jorgen exchange a glance. "As Cosmo was giving birth, all the" - he hesitated over the offensive word - "the stinky magic residue left over from creating Fairy-Poof flowed from his mouth and nose a little at a time. When it had finished, it all _rrr_ ushed back through his nose and along the paths there into his forehead chamber. His core sucked it up. And all that was leftover from Poof flowed from his third of our shared core into mine. I was in the hospital room. I saw it. And I felt it hit me." Anti-Cosmo rubbed his nose, finally embarrassed to be caught crying in public. At least none of the other patrons appeared to notice. Or rather, he hoped they hadn't. "I honey-locked with Anti-Wanda that night."

"You destroyed my cereal box," Jorgen muttered.

"And you're fortunate I wasn't inside your stomach when it kicked in," Anti-Cosmo snapped, "or you'd have died where you sat. The nerve, Jorgen! Raisins?" He shook his head and let his eyes fall back to his claws. "Well. We paired that night. I-it's my job to nurture the child for the first thirteen days of pregnancy-"

Anti-Sanderson made a muffled snorting noise. H.P. leaned behind Anti-Cosmo and smacked him on the back of the head with a hissed, "Be nice."

Right. He was telling this to three drakes who all had longer pregnancy cycles than he did. Even Anti-Sanderson, or at least that was the anticipated belief.

"A-anyway. All went well, until our honey-lock crept back. That… that thing was wriggling inside of me. It wanted out. Anti-Wanda was there. She's supposed to raise it until the next Friday the 13th. She was there as we locked again, and she leaned against me and did everything right, because she always does, it's easy for her, but when I went to press my pouch against hers and deliver his fragile little body, I- I-"

H.P. clasped his hands together, then released them and made a "Poooosh," sound with his mouth.

" _I dropped my bloody baby on his head from half a dozen meters up, H.P._ Is that all you can say? Have you ever been frozen upside-down on a perch, pale and bare and exposed, c _rrr_ aning your neck to stare at that limp blue mass on the floor above your head, knowing that he's dead, that you're too late, that you let him slip away, that you just… just…" With every limb shaking, his hands back on his face, Anti-Cosmo lowered himself into the booth seat again. "Oh, pass the sugar dish, would you, old sport?"

H.P. slid it across the table. He still hadn't drawn his other hand from his right cheek, where one of his fingers was tracing old scars among his wrinkles. "Have I ever been in that situation? No, I have not. More relevantly, your son isn't dead. If Poof's alive, the Anti-Poof won't be going anywhere fast. Technically, he hasn't even been born yet. Anti-Wanda simply hasn't put the smoke in him yet. He doesn't have a soul, and thus he can't die. That's all."

"I despise the name Anti-Poof," Anti-Cosmo mumbled. It felt better to be mad than distraught. He shoved an entire spoonful of sugar in his mouth. It electrified his tongue.

"That's too bad," H.P. said, watching as he went for another scoop. "Anti-Fairies are only allowed to choose the middle name, unless I've been misinformed, so it's not your decision to make."

"Bloody watch me. I'm the High Count."

"It is kinda dopey," Anti-Sanderson admitted. He reached out his hand and eased Anti-Cosmo's spoon away from the sugar dish. "Maybe give yourself a chance to stabilize there before you take any more, triggerclaws."

"To be fair, Ping would be a rather cute name for a pixie, wouldn't it?"

Anti-Cosmo dropped the spoon against his plate. "What does that have to do with anything?"

The Head Pixie arched one eyebrow. "I thought we were talking about my problems now. Pixie 507 will be on the way shortly. He'll be called Finley, but after that, I've about exhausted all my name ideas. What do you think? Should I go with Cuttingham or Kershaw for the next? I've wanted a Kershaw since before Sanderson was born, but you know, I'd look at a face and just sense that it wasn't quite right. One of these days, I'll get that pixie and I'll know it."

"Oh, a pox on your ridiculous surname naming convention," Anti-Cosmo cried again, slapping his palm on the table once more. His claws scratched over glass. "You have five hundred years to think about each one. What about my anti-baby?"

"What about your anti-baby?" Jorgen asked.

" _I broke him!"_

A sigh. H.P. curled two fingers over his mouth, but left his index finger there beside his ear. "I honestly don't understand what you're getting so worked up about. You could flatten this kid with a skyscraper and it's doubtful he would suffer a scratch. Your people regenerate."

The boiling tears came back in a flood. Every time they fell, the acid in them left sizzling holes in the borrowed shirt. Anti-Cosmo turned his attention away from Jorgen and Anti-Sanderson. "H.P., I need advice. You've raised, what, five hundred and six-"

"Five hundred and three."

"-pixies over the millennia. Surely you can loan me some advice to raising mine? I don't know the first thing about raising a child. I've… never held a pup in my life."

The Head Pixie scratched his chin. "Aren't you Mr. Genie Conservation Program?"

"That hardly counts." Anti-Cosmo groped again for the sugar dish. Anti-Sanderson took it off the table and placed it on his knee. "Certainly the first nine months are anxiety-ridden torture when iron deficiency or the slightest drip of water could kill them off while your back is turned, but once they're weaned and shifted to their own bottle, raising genies is easy. You keep their lamps plenty warm and bright so they don't fall into hibernation and they don't ask for much other than that."

"Well. Raising a pup will be like that. And it also won't be. You'll prepare for everything and realize too late that you've done too little. Nuada help anyone who chooses to have kids. It's a never-ending nightmare and the rewards are few and far between."

Jorgen got up and left without a word.

"Oh." Anti-Cosmo frowned. "Surely there's some aspect of parenthood you find enjoyable?"

H.P. glanced up at the ceiling, drumming his fingers. "It's familiar now," he said at last. "It's painful. It's exhausting. It's stressful. It's undignified. It's draining. It's frustrating. It's gross. I hate every single second of it with a burning passion the way I'd never hated anything before. But it's familiar to me. And I wouldn't give it up for the universe. I love it."

The anti-fairy scrunched his brows. "I don't understand."

"Trust me, you will."

Anti-Sanderson pointed a finger gun in the pixie's direction. "By this point I've raised almost all five hundred a' my brothe's. Trust him, you will."

"But what if I _don't?_ " Anti-Cosmo grasped his hair in both fists, his wings flexing and tightening between his back and the dark blue padding of his seat. "This whole pregnancy, every parent on the camarilla and every member of mine and Anti-Wanda's extended families and every stranger in the courtyard last New Year's have told me that. 'You'll get it. It will be hard, but you'll love it just the same. Don't overthink it. It comes naturally.' But H.P., I'm not _like_ you! You're a Soil Year, stubborn and persistent. You're calm. You're patient. This sort of thing is easy for you, just like everything I've _ever seen you do_ is easy for you."

H.P. said nothing. Neither did Anti-Sanderson, though he did slip the sugar spoon inside his mouth.

"Oh, don't give me the silent treatment like that. You know it's true. You figure things out, H.P. You don't get stressed. Everything that's happened to me today, or happened to me for the past two months, has brought my splintering nerves to the last frayed knot of my rope. Genies- Humans- Boudacians- I can't handle one more thing going wrong right now. You're the man who defied all the odds and has raised more children than anyone in the cloudlands and perhaps the entire _u_ niverse before. More than Ky Braddocki. More than Ilisa Maddington. And if my son isn't dead, that only makes things worse. I can't manage an entire race, fight for our rights, and raise a prince at the same time. You're a brilliant parent who can split his attention like that, but I'm _not!"_

Anti-Cosmo, shuddering, raised his head. His claws loosened from his hair.

"H.P., every time we meet, you outsmart me. You're always one step ahead, and no matter how fast I run or how hard I think, I can't keep up. You move too fast, and nothing ever slows you down. I… I couldn't even use my wand properly until you took me under your wing and showed me how. When I was an _adult_. I'm high-strung and my actions tonight are proof of it. I always explode when I'm upset- you know I do. I've already screwed up. I have no business raising a child."

"You did screw up pretty bad dropping him," Anti-Sanderson said thoughtfully, "so I guess the worst is already ove'."

"You outsmart me sometimes," H.P. murmured. He straightened Anti-Cosmo's fork beside the empty can of orange soda. "You're the one who can think on his feet. You're the one who can recognize when he's bitten off more than he can chew. And the one who can take a step back and recalculate things. I'm not brave. I just get irritated. I'm not clever. I'm just rash. I keep drilling dead end tunnels even when it would make more sense to swallow my pride and go back to find an easier way. And sometimes I look at you… and I get mad. Really. Really mad." He looked up. "Why does it come so easily to you?"

Anti-Cosmo frowned. "Pardon?"

"Giving up." H.P. tightened his fist around the fork. "What I see as a waste of resources, you view as a learning experience. Ever since I met you - really met you - I've noticed it. You don't fight when you know you can't win. You purposely lose battles to win a war. You're fast and excellent at detecting weak points and how to exploit them. You play mental games of chess, predicting moves I can't see. You sacrifice pawns to topple kings. That's something I'll never understand, and it's why you're so _frustrating_ to have as an enemy. A.C., you _get_ people." The pixie even put emphasis on the words. "You have an entire camarilla at your back. You're the one who's been married for fifty thousand years. You've bred and raised genies since you were a juvenile. You have a loving wife ready to give your son all that she can. Between the two of you, and the camarilla on top of that - and for crying out loud, _Sunnie_ \- you couldn't possibly screw up. And you're over here asking me about raising kids. Ha. Mr. Genie Conservation Program, I'm a sire. But I'm no father. You've outsmarted me there."

"I'm just flat-out dumb," Anti-Sanderson added helpfully.

Anti-Cosmo considered the words. "Do you really think he isn't dead?"

"He can't be. Poof is still alive. Just chill and wait patiently."

"But Anti-Wanda isn't showing signs of pregnancy. Her stomach is as flat as a board."

"He's a late bloome'."

"But her belly should have swollen. She should be square. He hasn't grown at all! I feel like I've- I've- I've prepared for everything, only to realize too late that I haven't done enough."

"Wasn't that the very first thing I said?"

"She's taking in so much more magic than she ever did before," Anti-Cosmo fretted, twisting his monocle against his eye. "At this rate, she'll get horrible back-up. Without a pup to p _rrr_ esent it to, she'll swell until she pops. What even happens to an anti-fairy with back-up? Ohhh, if she can't regenerate again, Fairy-Wanda and Drake Wanda will suffer a leak in their shared magic pool. Without Anti-Wanda's core to keep them balanced, Fairy-Wanda will die before long. And then Anti-Wanda will be gone forever. And where will that leave me? Childless? Wifeless? Ohh, everything was going so wonderfully when he was in my pouch, and then I was supposed to give him to Anti-Wanda, but I stupidly-"

H.P. finally had enough. He stood and slapped Anti-Cosmo's wildly-gesturing hand out of the air. Then he grabbed the wrist. Clenching it tight, he pulled Anti-Cosmo towards him. Caught off guard, the anti-fairy swallowed the literal butterflies fluttering up his throat and hovered in silence. H.P. splayed out each of his blue fingers one by one and lay them against his own tall forehead.

Old magic, ancient abilities, stirred within his chest. Anti-Cosmo felt himself slipping off-kilter. Was that a green glow enveloping his hand, or was the light just playing tricks along his shiny black claws? Sacred smoof, the Head Pixie was sapping all his energy, draining him dry, something was very-

… Blackness faded to gray. Oh. The Head Pixie had dragged him into an Anti-Fairy mind-meld. The Refracted had their scrying abilities which allowed them to view the world through the eyes of their feathered patrons. Seelie Courters could rely on the magical residue secreted from their oily skin to bring the Principle of Observation into effect, and help them avoid casual human notice or even at times gather the strength for a single emergency shapeshift without their wands. But Anti-Fairies had the mind-meld.

When Anti-Cosmo lifted his head and looked around, he found himself in a vast storeroom. He stood in an aisle between two bookshelves- two of many, many bookshelves. Cabinets made up their lower halves, like horses made up centaurs. The cabinets had drawers. More shelves, simple shelves, covered the walls. Anti-Cosmo turned several circles. Everywhere he looked, he drank in binders and file folders on those towering shelves, propped up by bookends and little tourist town trinkets. But what was he supposed to do? There was too much to look at! Where should he even start?

When he glanced down, he found one end of a long trail of purple yarn lying at his feet. He picked it up. When he tugged, the yarn resisted. No ball came rolling. Uncertainly, Anti-Cosmo followed the purple string along multiple aisles, wrapping it around his wrist as he went.

He gathered quite the supply that way. He weaved around tables and chairs. Finally, the yarn began to lift from the floor. Anti-Cosmo followed the line all the way to a corkboard in the center of the room. And on that corkboard was a map. An enormous map, delegating exactly what information could be found in all the different areas of the storeroom.

The answer to every question one could ever need to know could be answered by following that flowchart to another flowchart in each area. And perhaps another flowchart after that. All he had to do was think, follow, and approach what he wanted. Everything was organized, and smooth, and peaceful, and good.

"Feeling better?" asked a disconnected voice. Anti-Cosmo turned his head to find a blurry figure standing beside him, squarish hands stuffed inside gray pockets. A floppy gray hat smothered his salt and pepper hair. On its tip dangled a small metal star. The newcomer wasn't nearly as held-together as Anti-Cosmo (in fact, as the latter watched, multiple chunks of the figment's head and arms would dissolve and rematerialize as the Head Pixie's focus wavered). But he was, obviously, the Head Pixie. Or at least a manifestation of how H.P. saw himself that the mind-meld had projected into physical form.

Anti-Cosmo looked down at the yarn he'd wrapped around his wrist. Slowly, he slid it off his hand. Then he held it out for the manifestation of the Head Pixie to take. "Y-yes. Thank you."

As he let go of the yarn, a dot of black appeared at Anti-Cosmo's feet. It grew wider until it had enveloped all that there was to see. First, darkness. Then purple. Then green. Then blinking.

H.P. lowered Anti-Cosmo's hand from his forehead and sat back as the anti-fairy reoriented himself to the physical world. "Dude. Just chill. Most everything ends badly, but not everything ends as badly as it could have. Things will work out. Just look to the future, explore ideas, familiarize yourself with everything new, and classify it to what you already know. Don't do that emotion thing, and you'll pull through."

"'Look to the future'." Anti-Cosmo couldn't help but chuckle as he leaned back against his seat. If nothing else, the effort of the mind-meld had drained his energy. His loud rants were much less fun when he lacked the energy. "We _rrr_ eally are from opposite cultures, aren't we, old boy? Oh, no. Anti-Fairies are not precisely the innovative type. Our role is to maintain the balance of the _u_ niverse as it has always been, _rrr_ esearching the ways of our sweet world and accepting them for what they are. We stick to the past and our traditions and we like it that way."

The Head Pixie shrugged and clinked the lid back on top of the sugar dish. Anti-Sanderson stuck out his tongue and hopped up to seek out a new treat. "Perhaps it's easier for us. Pixies have very few traditions to speak of. I promise, your pup will be fine. Anti-Wanda's simply a bit behind in showing it, but he's in there drinking her magic. Things will work out. I'm sure he won't remember being dropped. It shouldn't cause him that much distress. Now. Are there any other questions I can answer while you have me here?"

Anti-Cosmo groaned. "Ohh, I long to pick your brain for hours, H.P., but I don't have the foggiest idea where to start."

"Well, when you do, you know my scry bowl's serial number. I'd offer you an extra business card in case you lost the last one, but…" H.P. plucked at his collar. "If you make it to five hundred and three offspring, you'll be wearing pajamas when you go out too. My suits have had food and ink spilled on them more times than they haven't. Would you believe it, but every one is in the laundry right now, and Rosencrantz didn't have them clean when I came to pick them up. Hmm. Accept that the unexpected will happen and cut anyone who mocks your struggles from your life immediately: that's rule number one."

His hands were still jittering, but Anti-Cosmo forced himself to chuckle. "I'll remember."

"And Anti-Cosmo?"

"Hm?"

The Head Pixie took the last can of soda from the bucket on the table. He leaned forward and bumped it against Anti-Cosmo's forehead, like a toast. It was cold, and comforting, and familiar on his fur. Then he sat back with a smile.

"For what it's worth, I think you'll make an excellent Daddy."


	33. (37) Grooming

_Summary:_ Sanderson is desperate for H.P.'s recognition in all that he does. Not that that's ever a surprise.

 _Characters:_ Sanderson, H.P., Longwood, Rosencrantz

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Fatal Mistake" / "Respect Your Elders"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

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 **37\. Grooming** (Open timeframe)

 _Years long gone, and years yet on their way_

* * *

Ironically, H.P. doesn't believe in nepotism. It's our favorite late-night joke, and we can smile and stare forward for minute after minute in the dark. No promoting us based purely on familial ties for him; he drinks our blood and sweat, crowing at the tang of salt when all has been said and done for the night. Smoof- if I could give him more of it, I would. If his need ever manifested itself in physical form, I'd slash my hand and press it to his lips before my wings could circle around. Then and there. I'd use my teeth, not 'if I had to' but 'should that be the best course of action'. ' _It's just a flesh wound.' 'I'll be along.'_

I'm on the floor. On my back right now, with my arms pressed tightly behind my head and my feet up against the purple wall. Both our logos are painted there, across from his penthouse door. First the overarching one- the swirling green S with two slashes driving through it like stakes in the ground. That's the mark of the Pixie race as a whole. Underneath it, smaller, is the logo of our company. _H.P.'s_ company. The lavender _P_ , with its head arched backwards and its tail curled in the same direction. Above its spine floats the dot of a lowercase _i._ A _P_ and an _i_ for Pixies Incorporated. That's the logo for H.P.'s company, stamped on every document we officially release and every gift, debit, or credit card we hand out too. My ID card has it marked in the upper left corner too, to indicate the company I was born in. The upper right corner is still blank. Waiting for a new mark when I come of age. My wrists are exactly the same. On the underside of my left wrist it's burned there, stamped forever in black ink, so deeply scarred that even our anti-pixies carry the brand. My right is waiting.

All pixies need a company. That's what we were taught from the time that I was just over 8,000. That's what a group of pixies is called - what a _generational subset_ of pixies is called - and when we start reproducing asexually like him, we'll need to design something of our own so we can separate ourselves, divide ourselves, classify ourselves, organize ourselves. My company, perhaps the first building on a new street as Pixie World's single city expands, will specialize in music. Tapes, CDs, instruments, rhymes, lyrics, sheet music, microphones, iPods. So many copies of sheet music (I might, perhaps, set myself in charge of all the sheet music of the entire company, and place it in storage under my jurisdiction in the rear of my building). The Sanderson company's mark is going to be an eighth note that rolls straight into a _P_ so they flow together, a noted note. Wilcox told me it looks like a "dP", like it means "dead pixies" or "dumb pixies" or something equally unflattering. I told Wilcox to shut up. If anything, it's a set of leaves on a vine, blooming upward towards the sky, on and on, growing and winding tighter, unable or at least not wanting to stand on its own.

I am left-handed. Each time I pick up a pen and glance down as I write, I see the symbol of H.P.'s company peeking beneath my sleeve. To some of us, it's an annoyance. Caudwell still wishes to break away from what we are, to leave the rest of us behind, and to him, his brand is a chain he will never break. But I find it a comfort. No matter what happens, no matter how far I go, I will always belong to him.

We are not identical.

Almost identical. But we are not. And while we don't like to advertise it and not a lot of people are in the know, there is one fool-proof way that will always tell us apart when facial recognition fails and imprints run together, or should the effort of checking our fingerprints prove impractical at the time. It's not uncommon for H.P. to watch us milling about the food court, then lunge forward in his signature way - instantaneous as the sending of an email, his intention completely undetectable until he makes the move - and snatch one of us by the arm. Just to check. He'll always nod then, and say, "I thought so," in a crisp and satisfied manner before he lets us go. As I take my feet off the wall and roll over onto my stomach, I tug my sleeve closer to my elbow, and it's there. Three numbers printed neatly on my skin just below his company brand.

 _002._

It's my number, the number I'm as familiar with as my own name, though I must confess I do look forward to seeing the _001_ appear on my other wrist when the day I cradle my firstborn to my chest finally comes. We are not identical, casually separated by our branding marks and numbers, but so long as they are not foolishly placed on a nymph still in the exoskeleton that he will shed in a few months' time, they last forever. I belong somewhere. I belong to him. And as long as I live, no one can take this away from me.

I already made my obligatory return to my apartment when I checked out of my office at 7:00. I ate two unsalted crackers for dinner and brushed the crumbs off my tie. H.P. gets annoyed if I change out of my suit before I show up for my after-hour duties, the same way he gets annoyed if I don't take it out "beyond the borders of Pixie World when by default I am a constant representative of our company". I am a figurehead identifiable by my signature cowlicks; I ought to look my best, even when I go out with the intention of singing or drinking or trying to dance. "Your retinue duties are an extension of work duties and I want you to look professional," he says every time I whine about the scratchiness of long-worn fabric, or the freedom that my neck would be offered by loosening my tie. No. Retinue duties are part of my job. And when I'm on the job, I must follow proper dress code. I don't totally get it (After all, shouldn't my work obligations end when I clock out? Retinue duties are classified as a biological need for gynes and drones, and I don't get paid extra for all the work I put into meeting both my demands and his), but that doesn't matter. I don't want him to be annoyed.

It's thirty-seven more minutes until 9:00. The best time of the day. The bells in the tower of the shrine we erected to the Tuatha Dé Dannan (may the Lost Ancients return from their underground prison) will toll twenty-one times. Charming place. Better than the one the Fairies banned us from entering once they decided we were deceitful, contagious, and impure. Even Anti-Cosmo has verbally admitted he likes it, especially the bells. _Tin tin, tin tin, tin tinaling tin._

Like clockwork - like a script - he'll appear phoenix-like in the doorway. The hum of wings first. Then the click of the lock. A murmur to Longwood ("Good night", "Good night"). The slow creak of zinflax wood on durable enchanted hinges. Longwood is released. In my mind's eye, he slips through and flits away without a word, his thoughts presumably inclined towards calculating how many kisses he'll manage to squeeze out of his selkie punk of a girlfriend tonight before I am unceremoniously dumped back in our shared apartment to catch them holding hands on the couch. That insignificant crease in his nose always reveals the moments when he bothers to spare me a disgusted glance, even if the tinted lenses of his shades hide his eyes.

Longwood is a subordinate gyne; he doesn't participate in retinue duties like we do. He seems to get his fix by kissing damsels instead. It's totally gross, but it keeps him from chasing us, and it keeps away the whispered rumors of why the Head Pixie chose a rat like him to be company vice president over the pixie who is so obviously his favorite in all other walks of life. He doesn't touch H.P. and H.P. doesn't touch him unless he has to. Neither do we drones, fortunately bound to a highly superior figure with so much authority permeating the air that we avoid the horrid fate of constantly flipping loyalties between him and the seven other gynes who litter the company- Longwood, Smith, Cresswell, Chidlow, Spicer, Lambton, Kettingham… None of them as satisfying to turn myself over to as the reigning Head Pixie, even though I do wander over to them on occasion when H.P. neglects his duties. He's never happy about that. He'd be even less happy if he found out I sometimes do it on purpose.

Oh, Smith knows how to preen wonderfully. He'd make an excellent Head Pixie, which is why he's next in line after Longwood as it stands right now. He can turn a drone faster than any gyne I've ever met (It must be the rough tongue- He's always so rough, so precise, so deliberate, so _dominant_ with the predictable way he always reads a face from left to right, and he's the only one short of the Head who instantly makes me straighten to prim attention and greet him every time we pass in the hall. And he's not stingy with the dominance licks either, sometimes pausing to offer a quickie when he sees me glancing over, just because he knows H.P. keeps me sensually starved on purpose and I'm not always getting what I need after hours; ooh la la, and this when you know I'm happily committed to a more dominant gyne, you naughty charmer, you). But H.P. doesn't care that we've conducted surveys, and that Smith wins the popular drone vote every time. Longwood this. Longwood that. No arguments. Sanderson. Yes, sir.

Even though I am number 002 and Longwood is number 005 so we share a four-pixie apartment, and even though there's a short window of time every morning between when I finish my shower and get ready for work when I often find myself checking his subtle pheromones out on my tongue, I'm not driven to present Longwood with my licks like I do with H.P. Nor would I _want_ to! The thought is repulsive. A surefire way to make me freeze up mid-skim and then wriggle to shake out my wings and loosen my spine. Give myself to _Longwood_ the same way I give myself to H.P.? Even Smith is just my casual secondary gyne and doesn't get to see that side of me.

What the Head Pixie and I have is special. I don't even allow Anti-Cosmo to take that away on days when he walks straight up behind me and casually puts his cold, furry hand on the back of my neck, just because he knows what it does to my senses. Of all the years he had to be born in, the fact that he's a Water like me makes resisting his lure _sooo_ much more difficult than it needs to be; it really isn't fair.

But no, I don't even give myself to Anti-Cosmo the same way I give myself to H.P., and _he's_ kiff-tied with Sunnie himself - bears the guy's favor on his cravat and all - so he totally wacks up my senses with all his "Dur hur I channel an actual nature spirit and as far as another Water like you is concerned I smell more dominant to you than your boss could ever hope to be" in that way that leaves him absolutely brimming over with the salty scents of dark, milk, and white chocolate pouring in slow motion over dipped strawberries, and when he's around then you can just _feel_ with every one of your senses in 1080 HD quality the mental image of Anti-Cosmo plucking up a strawberry between his thumb and forefinger claws without breaking eye contact and swirling it through that milky cream-brown pool at the bottom of the fountain dish and bringing the rosy fruit to his lips, piercing it with his curved and shining white fangs- and that _sensation_ of him biting into that mental chocolate-coated strawberry just _slams_ you from an entire hall away and absolutely washes over your tongue like the most delicious sea salt caramels to ever melt all the way in the back of your mouth a-and… What was I talking about?

Oh, Longwood, Longwood, Longwood… Ha ha, ha ha. I know you're upset about the people I've hurt, and you don't agree with the things I've done. Brother, I know. I know it's so hard for you to understand adoration and perfection, but that's because you've never had to fight jagged tooth and chipped nail for his approval. You're not the one who lost the universe simply because you care too much.

The sigh, half begrudging and half (dare I so much as think the word?) affectionate there to greet me after Longwood has gone. I spring up then, always. Scrambling to my feet in a single bound, lifting my wings, brushing dust from my cheek and from my evening, magic-touched suit that always fits too loosely on my thin shoulders, because no matter how many times I used to fiddle with its size, I never seemed to eat enough to gain any weight, and eventually gave up the practice altogether.

All the medical texts point to obsession as the reason why. A spike in delight, a spike in blood pressure, a spike in magic drainage, a spike in metabolism… Dust, how I used to beg our nonexistent gods every night for weight to stick to my soft bones. Even sugar dissipates like it was never eaten. They're right to call me puny, along either axis. My fate is a twisted one, of gazing up the nostrils of those whose diapers I once changed as I float along the halls of the most successful shipping company in the known universe.

Sometimes, when I'm not too thin to disappear between the frames of their shades, my coworkers thrust their cups of vanilla pudding or their soy cubes and salads at me. _By my hat, Sanderson, you have to eat something. Please eat- you need to eat._ And I force myself to swallow every unwanted spoonful, but what's the point? I could devour the front half of a griffin, but my body type will always be too thin. I was simply born cursed. I will never have the broad shoulders and rounded belly of the Head Pixie whom I so adore. Eat enough to get by, ration your meals, skip them if you can afford to, because there's no point in overindulging if you can save yourself the money…

So the books blame obsession for my doomed scrawniness, but that's typical of drones, obsession; there's nothing to be concerned about. I'm much too smart to crash and burn- I'm much too humble- I'm much too _perfect_. Even H.P. says I'm perfect. I cannot afford to suffer weakness, and as a result, I elect not to.

Thirty-three minutes now. The web of skin between my forefinger and thumb is bleeding blue. I bit it to keep myself quiet, but you can only do that so many times before the groan rolls off you, rippling. I try to conceal it in the crook of my arm, but I needn't have bothered- Longwood's chittering drowns it out beyond the door, if the solid wood doesn't.

Vice president this, vice president that. That jingling metal star crowning his cap, identical if a smaller size than _his_ , rightfully ought to have fallen to me. I'm the firstborn. I'm the alpha retinue drone. I'm the pixie everyone knows beyond the borders of our world. I'm the one who works the closest with the boss. I'm the one who was anticipated. Expected. The prince. It was Longwood's body that attended his coronation, but my spirit which was crowned. I know the position was and still is meant for me, even if the paperwork proclaims otherwise in bleeding black and blue. By all the pretend gods… The fact that I watched H.P. select Longwood to steal my destined place is just another of my miracle wounds that survived to heal, when I thought it never would.

When I was younger, I thought it must be because of the freckles; that was why he favored Longwood as his inevitable heir, and rejected me. My small hands would smudge food and dirt across my cheeks. I drew them on with a brown marker. I once spent a decade starting my mornings with an unmagicked knife in my hand, studying the mirror and carefully making slits. Then China caught me and we had to have a talk. Red blood. Red blood. Drip. Drip. Drip. Unlike the scars on the inside of my wrist, rinsed in rosewater immediately after the inking process was done, those marks on my face healed cleanly.

Longwood for company vice president. What a joke. A joke wrapped in a joke. Longwood knows nothing. Longwood deserves nothing. Longwood is nothing. I am the only pixie in the company who deserves to inherit it. I am loyal. I am humble. I am patient. You're a proud soul, Longwood, and you could never live through the things I did. I've killed to protect us - the Pixie race - and if it were up to you, you would have let us die. Five hundred of your coworkers, your friends, your family, your identical genetics. Disgusting.

No, no, I don't think it's "petty" to remember all the times you've betrayed us. It would take more than my six fingers and two thumbs to count off all the times you've let your mind slip away- away from work and into the lips of whichever damsel happened to be passing nearby. And those are only the times I've hovered in the doorways or peered into my crystal ball and watched you. We are parthenogenetic beings. An asexual race. H.P. was clear from our youth that we don't need to take mates. Why wasn't that good enough for you?

You insist on sinning that way, disobeying his orders, murmuring passwords and spilling gossip as you kiss your way along a neck or outstretched arm, over and over despite the therapy, despite our best efforts, and still you look upon your life and view yourself as pure? Your body is soiled, your soul is dirtied, and your hands are clean only because they refuse to kill, even to defend the company.

You call yourself noble; you call yourself a martyr, as if that swift sacrifice I made on your behalf when you refused to lift a finger had begun and ended life as one of your ever-so-frequent sorry ideas. Longwood the considerate, Longwood the obedient, Longwood the shy… I haven't the faintest chirp what the universe sees in you. You're not worth admiring, and I will not thank you for all the punctures left by your existence in what could have been a pleasurable life for me, over and over since nymphhood and only growing deeper and more twisted with age.

I will not thank you for that, nor dwell over the fact that the core beating in my head is what it is… or me who I used to be, almost was… another lifetime, another timeline, another could-have-been, another soul, with _002_ marked on the wrong hand… Oh Longwood, you have no idea the depths I've gone to hate you. It doesn't matter how many times you save my life, or let me hold your arm when my alternative is to remain abandoned in the dark, or how many times you fumble your way into my room at night and lean your forehead against mine, your thumbs rubbing circles along my palms, shushing and crooning when old memories are strangling my throat. When I remember what ties my soul to my body now. When I remember what I took from you, what I tore and burned. When I remember that the only reason I'm alive is because of your _mistakes_. Your folly is now my lifeline. It's cruel and disgusting. You are cruel and disgusting.

No, your present-day kindness doesn't excuse what you've done in the past, or the pixies you've almost gotten killed. Cool motive. Still murder. Aspen's influence does not haunt my lucid mind, offering you any sort of affectionate leeway. I still remember your flaws, and you don't deserve to be forgiven in this over-baked world.

But I can let it go nonetheless. See? I'm the mature one, I'm the good boy. I can make myself move on. The future is bathed in new opportunities. People can change, we can change. I truly believe that if you worked with half the fervor I did, you might become the second most loyal and humble pixie in the company. Dear King Nuada, I'm glad that it's not you H.P. has cleaning his wings. You'd find a way to damage them. You've broken half of everything you've ever touched.

Twenty-seven minutes. I replay one of my more recent chances to rise to my duties and scrub the stale magic from H.P.'s shoulder blades through my mind's eye. Imagine my fingers wrapping around the black handle of that long-worn wing brush, my gaze briefly flicking over it and trying to determine how many more nights it will last in good condition. H.P. sprawled horizontally across his soft break room chair with his feet kicked up on the far arm, the alphabet soup and animal crackers resting in his lap, tie loose. His dull, pale, beautiful square wings dangling so casually from over the nearer arm of the chair. Apexes to jugal fold- that's the rule. Start the brushing from the outside, move upwards and inwards towards the center. The white shirt will come off last so I can take my damp cloth and carefully dab around the aching places beneath the knobs of his wings. _Longwood found a discrepancy in the automatic payment system_ , he says, blowing on a steaming spoonful. _Oh,_ I ask, cross-legged on an ottoman of my own, calmly brushing. _How so?_

And we talk, while my cheeks burn pink from sour jealousy. H.P. turns his face, as he always does when he can feel my care slipping in my work, and I bow my head in the hopes that between my shades and the dim light, he won't catch anything of my slight facial expression. He understands my rivalry with our dear sweet Mister Markell Longwood Mayfleet, even if he does not endorse it. There's true leadership in that, in the way he can look past my lone flaw, tell me that I'm trying, tell me I'll achieve an unreachable point one day and shed the hate like a butterfly cocoon.

The soup is finished, eventually, and I'll offer him his black square-hooked cane, which he'll instantly refuse with a glare or snide remark. I'll put it back in the corner and wonder how much longer it will be before the day comes that he unhappily decides he wants it, and pretends it's something beautiful he never mocked. Teeth are brushed, and sometimes there's a bath, and always there's an idea to be marked down, an errand to be run, or a verse of scripture to be read ("Long ago our fathers sailed from far across the stars; if we live righteously this land is ours", et cetera). He takes his medicine, without acknowledging it. Laundry will have to be cleaned and ironed before I lapse into dreams. Later.

I hand him one of the usual Pixie Holotype shirts he often likes to sleep in - the fabric thin, no sleeves, perfect to prevent overheating - while he plucks at the waistband of his pajama pants and grumbles that it's too tight. It's always too tight. I straighten his thin collar and smooth out the wrinkles. I want it to be just right, because he's perfect. Dear Nuada, he's perfect. H.P. is my everything. I remind him constantly, but I don't believe he truly gets it. If he only knew how deeply rooted my devotion runs, ever ever on. A shame he'll never know.

And then.

Preparations for bed finished, only one last task awaits. One Head Pixie's chore is a drone pixie's drug. Innocently I present myself before him with my left hand patiently extended, the right arm folded behind my back. _"If I may progress to preening, sir,"_ I say, in a statement. Smooth confidence is absolutely key.

 _"But of course. That's your job, that's your biology, and who am I to take that away from you?"_

 _"Would you prefer I begin with a stimulating shoulder massage? To better disperse your pheromones in the air?"_

 _"If you're gentle. I'm afraid I strained my left wing today, and I don't want to irritate it."_

 _"Sir, I'm always gentle."_ Massaging the Head Pixie is _my_ territory. I'm the alpha retinue. And no "magic fingers" are going to rob me of my job. Not again. Oh, nothing will fix the utter betrayal that shot through my skin when I _ping_ ed in on that- that _random fairy_ stealing my spotlight, or satisfying the Head in a way only I was supposed to, careful and deliberately soothing hands coaxing out that drool-inducing cocktail of scents from the back of his neck, spinning them through the air like smoke off a brisket, cinnamon and scrambled eggs and bananas on my tongue… But I forgive him. Of course I forgive him. Not the fairy. But I forgive H.P.

The usual reaction overtakes him instantly as I get to work, then, no matter how tense and startled he was before. His shoulders ease, and he leans back his head, folding his hands in his lap. _"Oh yeah. Right there. That's the spot_ … _Sanderson, you're getting good at this."_

 _"I was always good at this, sir."_ My lips hover over the words, but then, with confidence, _"Better than Magnifico?"_

 _"Much better than Magnifico."_

 _"You only flatter me out of what you've decided is reinforcing apologetic necessity, sir."_

 _"I have nothing to gain with empty whispers. Lying would be untrue, and I'm much too old to add 'liar' to my resume. I'm being completely truthful. After all, you're the best. You're perfect."_

 _"Thank you, sir."_

… Yet more and more these days, he puts his hand to my mouth, touching my lips with the pads of all three fingers. "Not tonight, Sanderson."

All fantasies evaporate in a horrible, shattering instant. "But _sir_ -"

"I'm not in the state of mind this evening."

"But-"

"Sanderson."

"Yes, sir." I withdraw the hand, but place them both to my hips anyway as he turns up the A/C. "H.P., I have a complaint about the intermittent schedule of reinforcement you've set me on, and I would prefer you placed me back on the continuous one."

"You're vice president of the complaints department. You know how to file it."

"Rosencrantz is on the continuous schedule, and it's my understanding that I rank about Rosencrantz."

"Rosencrantz is young and learning his trade." He usually turns his back at this or at similar comments that may litter similar conversations on similar days, leading me to step around him, whirling as I twist on my heel, with a cross swish of my wings.

"Sir, I could preen him for you so you don't have to. I'm your alpha retinue drone. It's my job to spread your pheromones throughout the company. Let me help you. I know how, and you shouldn't let my specialized training go to waste."

"The current system is efficient." And the thermostat will go down another tick.

"You always used to let me do this."

"We are creatures who look towards the future, Sanderson. When technology advances, so do we."

The accusing finger flying towards the door. "You gave dominance licks to Longwood!"

"Longwood is a subordinate gyne who was experiencing a flicker of rebellion and had to be put in his place." And then, often, he tilts his glasses down and smiles while I steam where I stand. "It would be an unnecessary use of energy to treat you in the same fashion. You always remember your place. After all, you're the best. You're _perfect_."

Usually, while I stand there with my finger still out and my eyes burning behind my shades, he'll leave our little break room through the door that leads into his private bathroom, and from there into the penthouse, and flick the locks behind him so I can't follow. If he's in an especially sour mood, he might _ping_ me directly to my apartment before I have the chance to knock any lamps to the floor and wait, ears pricked, for the sound of him hurrying back to confront me.

True, it sounds like a miserable existence, to live in constant deprivation of your biological needs… but some nights, Sanderson wins. Oh, and those nights are magnificent.

 _"Come on, Sanderson. You can do a better S10 signal than that. Press a little deeper. Really dig your tongue into it on the upward swish."_

 _"Will that please you, sir?"_

 _"Mmm… That sounds like an emotion. Emotions aren't my department."_

 _"I'll do it anyway. But sir, when you give me my dominance licks, I'd appreciate it if you spent longer on my cheeks, and less time on my forehead."_

 _"Sanderson. I didn't request your criticism. You're fortunate I let you do this at all. Don't get sassy with me."_

 _"Yes, sir."_

It doesn't happen as often nowadays as it used to, but intermittent schedules would simply be pathways to extinction if no reinforcement was ever presented again. And sometimes when I hold out my hand, my head tipped to one side, H.P. relents. He takes it and lets me dip him down, and go to work grooming his neck with my tongue. I'm delicate and precise when I paint my swirling signs of submission and absorb his sweat and pheromones, and I know he prefers me to all the other drones in the company, even if he refuses to admit it aloud. Contrary to what he thinks, I actually _can_ detect some of his subtle cues of pleasure.

No, perhaps he doesn't actually let them slip in the midst of our evening preening ritual, his mouth always stretched in either a bored line or moving carefully as he places perfect dominant licks at certain sensual points across my face, but I sense the pleasure cues in his other behaviors. I'm his favorite, and that's why I'm the alpha retinue. I'm his favorite, and that's why he lets me alone get this close after hours, and I get the pleasure of responding to any concerned knocks at his (shut) break room door. And for just a few precious minutes, it's me and not Longwood who gets to act as Head Pixie _ad litem_. "Can H.P. check my citations before I attach this file?" Rosencrantz might beg, clutching a dented and borrowed laptop to his chest, to which I can lean my shoulder and hand on the doorframe and say, "Sorry, we're busy." Only once did H.P. consider it a brilliant idea to call the smaller pixie in, thinking he could satisfy us both with licks and pheromones at the same time. When he realized how distant, careless, and sulky I instantly became, he did not suggest I share our special alone time again.

 _"Where were we, Sanderson?"_

I suppress the wiggle in my wings. _"You were just about to give me my dominance licks, H.P."_

 _"Oh? But you haven't finished with your subordinate ones yet."_

 _"But- sir! I already did them. In fact, I did most of them nine times. Weren't you paying attention to me?"_

 _"Hm? Is it really that late? Well, I suppose we can pick this up next time."_

 _"Sir, that's not fair! You promised!"_

 _"Sanderson."_

 _"_ … _Yes, sir."_

And as we huffily part ways for the night (that night and so many similar nights), I'm always left fretting over the constant question while I make my way back to my apartment- prepared to snatch the first instrument I come in contact with and spit rhymes until the _ping_ ed-in post-it notes requesting I shut up are raining down on my head courtesy of every other pixie in the Rapunzel Tower, and maybe a few from the Beanstalk on the other side of our city as well.

 _"Weren't you paying attention to me?"_

Even when I slam my hands hard on a keyboard, or strum my fingers down a guitar, or smash the antenna of my cell phone against a cymbal, or rake a bow across a set of violin strings, I can't distract myself from that nagging thought.

 _Weren't you paying attention to me? Didn't you notice I was doing perfectly? Do you even care?_

Does he play with me on purpose, because he finds it amusing? Or does his mind wander despite the crisp passion I take in my work, and lead him to actually forget where he is and what's going on? Is he getting that old already? Is his memory starting to slip away? Because that will be a problem. I don't care if I have Smith to turn to. That's just licks; it doesn't mean anything. It just feels good. Smith isn't my universe like H.P. is. I'm not ready to let him go.

When I get out of control with my instruments, Longwood will smart in and wrench me back with a hand on my shoulder. _"Go to bed, Sanderson."_

 _"Get off me! You're not my gyne!"_

 _"Maybe not right now, but I will be one day, and for now, I still happen to be your superior. As well as a very annoyed roommate to boot."_

 _"I will_ never _let you be my gyne! Let me go! Don't treat me like a nymph! You're not my dad!"_

The instant pain fills his uncovered eyes and curls his lips into a snarl. His grip tightens around my arm. I stand there, mouth hanging open, my wings fluttering, as we both pause and take in the hand that flies up behind his head. Rearing for a smack across my cheek louder than my music.

He doesn't smack me. He never smacks me. But he always wants to, when I make him remember he's no one's father, and he has no son. That if he ever becomes Head Pixie and chooses his own successor, that pixie will not be his firstborn. That I'm the reason why. That Mother Nature and Father Time took my side over his. That _Longwood v. Sanderson VII_ is nicknamed "The Tree-Hugger Case" for a reason, but it's not because his name contains the word "wood", and it's not because I've ever expressed any desire to touch him. That what happened shouldn't have happened. A distortion. A miscalculation. A blip. An error in reality.

That he didn't have to choose to save me.

 _"I'll go to bed,"_ I mumble, and he drops me and turns away. _"Please do, Sanderson."_

And coming into work the next morning, I'll find my summary report for last night's preening neatly placed in the middle of my desk. _Key points are as follows: You let your knees jab my stomach when you dipped me down. They're pointy and uncomfortable, so please correct this. I don't want your fingers roaming up and down my back. They are to remain at the knobs of my wings as I thought I had made clear. Take care to brush your teeth. You smell. Your tie came loose halfway through and you did not fix it. You are not to allow your wings to chirp while you work. We are professionals; keep a lid on your expressed behaviors. At 21:47, you made five zig-zags on what was supposed to be a four zig-zag S2 mark, and you signaled S4 so many times that it got super annoying. Your S9s are always too fast and sloppy. I know you sulk about them because the chin crosshatch is Longwood's go-to signature, but I still want them done correctly. S11 needs more force on the second curl; the "leaf" on the "stem" should be a deep scrape, not a delicate flick. S7 strayed too high at 12:49. You need to practice S8; you're closing the third cross too near the center of my throat. I want to see more S5s next time._

 _In addition, you've formed a dreadful habit of initiating too much body contact. I should theoretically be able to balance a copy of Da Rules on my chest in the space between us once you are in position holding me, and perhaps I will next time. This is a preening session, not a hug. Don't get so touchy-feely. It's annoying and you're making it weird. You are a professional retinue drone displaying your submissive loyalty, not a hired snatter brought in to pinch and tease. You know why drones always lead the preening foreplay. This is a ceremony of you willingly giving yourself to me. That is why you dip and hold me, and I do not dip and hold you. When you do not conform to my requirements, I interpret your deviations the same way you would interpret me being the first to extend my hand and leading you through the ritual. As though it were a ceremony where I were coaxing you towards my bed and pinning you down for a sensual night._

 _That's not what keeping a retinue is about. It's just licks. It doesn't mean anything._

 _This is why we don't use_ _the bed. This is why I insist you remain floating at all times. This is why all preening takes place in break rooms and not in my penthouse or your apartment. It it platonic, it is professional, and I know you understand and desire the same. Some gynes like it when their drones show initiative during preening. I don't. Do not try to take command and vary from my instructions, or I shall question where your hormones angle. We do not want the Fairy media snatching up another bundle of lies and smearing our names across the cloudlands in a negative fashion. Also, I distinctly caught a low whine about my mass at 21:56, which I do not appreciate in the least. Puny as you are, you should be able to hold me easily. We're all weightless._

As I hold the report in my left hand, I'll slide my shades off with the right and tap one lens against my teeth, and slowly nod. I will learn, and I will adapt, and I will improve. It stings when I realize I haven't performed to the best of my abilities, but critique is useful. Especially if it pleases him. As Alexander Rybak so excellently put it, "No one else could make me sadder. But no one else could lift me high above."

Sacred smoof, knowing that you've pleased the Head Pixie, that he's as proud of you as a father of his son… That's the best sensation in the world.

It won't as easy for me to improve as it is for most of the others, which is a minor annoyance that comes with the job and must be overcome. I'm the alpha retinue drone. All other drones in the company answer to me. I have just as much authority to preen them as H.P. does, so long as he preens me in the morning first to blanket me with his scent. Which he rarely elects to because he always claims to have so much else to do, despite the fact that I could have run errands for him when we met the night before. Hmph. I could snag any drone to pass me in the hallway and do him right then against the wall if I want to, driving my knee into his stomach and clutching his shoulders with my hands to keep him pinned. As the alpha retinue among drones that are already committed to him, I'm legally allowed to do that when on a refresh patrol- not forbidden from making certain moves on them like the gynes are. But that's not "professional", that's not "respectable", even if it does seem the fastest, most efficient, and most cost-effective way to go about things. I don't really get it, but H.P. does, and that's why he's the boss.

The largest irritant I'll cite on this matter is that when I act as alpha among the others, by default, I have to step into the dominant role. No drone is allowed to touch their tongue to my forehead; it's the only time someone ever scoops me up and dips me, rather than the other way around. Their fingers pinching the base of my wings. Licking their lips as they check me over. I don't like that part of the job (I'm in it more for the extra morning preen from a legitimate gyne and the ability to legally travel anywhere my gyne does- not this time-consuming 'help distribute the pheromones' task that doesn't pay extra). It's nothing special. Nor am I allowed to lick another drone's neck since I rank above them all, which rather limits my ability to perfect my submissive signals outside of my time with the Head Pixie. Even after over 250,000 years of honing my skills, H.P. always finds several areas a session where I'm not performing to his standards.

Maybe he does it on purpose. Maybe he doesn't really want me to evolve into the perfect drone. Because he loves to keep pushing me down. Because that's how he wins. Because maybe, for all the time we spend together beyond the borders of Pixie World, me watching his back and faithful as a _Wolbachia_ strain, he doesn't actually trust me. Maybe he fears there's a little insubordinate Anti-Sanderson in me after all, biding his time for a day when he slips and I accidentally allow myself to undergo a flicker of dominance. Not that I would- of course I never would! But maybe he keeps me down and deprived because it's how he keeps me controlled. It's how he keeps me _submissive_.

That's nature. I don't mind nature. I only wish I was allowed to suggest improvements on my end of the deal.

Internally, lying on the floor before his penthouse door and just letting the hypothetical scenes play out in my head, I stretch my arms and groan. H.P. is an unconditioned reinforcer, every part of him. I know his footsteps. I know his wingbeats. I know his interior design tastes and I know he doesn't like the crusts on his sandwiches, but only when they're kitnut butter and jelly, because he likes to eat them separately after the rest of the sandwich. He eats a lot of those. I know his exact specifications. I make them perfectly every time. I do _everything_ perfectly _every time_. I know his everything. I adore him.

But I don't just adore him with the fervor of a thousand fiery suns. If wishes were for pixies, then before I could blink I would wish to take his place.

I don't even care if maybe the timestream would shift and I wouldn't be Head Pixie (although that would be ideal). I just want to be _him._ Always collected, always clever, always flexible, always unwavering, always dominant, always _right_. I want that to be _my_ personality. We're genetically identical! It _should_ be my personality! I _should_ be smart and respected like him! _It's not fair!_

… But he could offer that to me, and I would honestly struggle to give up my music for it, so I suppose we will never be entirely alike. Makes one wonder at times why I refuse to consider that statement - _never alike_ \- and still bother to try. I suppose it's because if I don't cling to him, then my mind will deteriorate around me like my bony, hungry body. Skip the meals, save yourself the money, you're immortal, it will be okay…

I've heard there are such things as sexual fantasies. Hamilton and Bayard if not Longwood have proven so through the slurred words of drunken stupor on a Lotus Palace balcony. My fantasies are different. Sexless, loveless, emotionless. I lust after the concept nonetheless. Imagine, if you will: Mister Sanderson Ennet and (pecan on top) _Whimsifinado_ tagged onto the end of my name like the only holiday gift I could ever want. Salty white freckles on my face, the enveloping hat, those old scars slashed across my right cheek and hands. I'll take it all. Ambrosine. Solara. Kalysta. Emery. China. Venus. Cherry. Iris. Gynes. The war. The _cohuleen druith._ Weskar. Commelina. The Fairy Elder. Politics. Aspen (as if I didn't deal with _him_ enough). Central test theory and thought experiments. Constant pregnancy. I don't care. They're worth it. They're all worth it, if I could've been raised by Ambrosine and been born as _him_.

 _Beloved king_ , I always think as I trace my fingers along the edges of his white curls- I have one split-second to do so everyday as I tug his cap more firmly around his ears, ensuring it will stay on as the final phase of my retinue duties begins. If I'm lucky. Do you notice that I take care to set it just right, H.P.? Do you notice that I go out of my way to make you comfortable and obey your orders, even for unpleasant tasks like wearing my stiff suit while I offer you my subordinate licks, when you have already changed yourself into more casual dress? It isn't quite fair, but I allow it, because it's you. Oh, if our positions were reversed, I'd treat you right. I recognize loyalty, sir. If you were my alpha retinue and I your Head Pixie, you'd be my universe, too. Don't you ever think the same way about me, even a shred? That I'm worth anything? Surely there must be something in you that must, after all that I've ever done for you.

Briefly, I entertain the thought with a smile. _"Where were we, Fergus?"_

And you are there. A little chubby around the corners, sir, your hair distinctly sticking up in scruffs near both ears, the signature spiral curling out from the back. Freckles? Perhaps not; I suppose in my fantasy, you are the drone, and I play the freckled gyne. You straighten your pointed hat (It's a small hat, with a star at its tip) and pale blue sweater (I let you wear pale blue sweaters and jeans if you want to, because maybe that would be your style if you were my age).

 _"You were just about to give me my dominance licks, H.P."_

I'm on my L-shaped office couch, because I'd be the type of gyne to want to conduct dominance licks while lying back on the couch (Trust me, sir, holding your weight mostly off the ground the way you like it doesn't actually get easier over the millennia, and lying down would be such a relief). One earbud is wound into place in my ear, the other in yours. I always have a fresh playlist set to shuffle so our exchanges are never exactly the same. You're carefully on top of me, eyes stretched huge behind your owl-like glasses (You probably need glasses). Limbs splayed and balanced among the cushions as you try to avoid actually touching my shoulders and torso out of concern that unnecessary physical contact will earn you a scolding or a light smack (It won't). Then I bring my hand to your cheek, and hold it there as you melt into my gentle touch. Your glasses shift when I bump the arm. You lick your lips. When you raise your hand to touch the backs of my knuckles, your eyelids flickering shut, the eighth note _P_ symbol of my company is distinctly visible on the inside of your left wrist. Yes, all the way down to the _002_ printed underneath.

 _"Don't call me H.P., son. Don't call me Ennet Whimsifinado either. Call me Dad."_

We begin, tongues scraping deeply at first to clean the skin and open the pores, then gradually softer as we recognize each other's movements and fall into synchronized speed and motion. I don't make you wait until the end of our session before I give you those dominance licks you crave more than processed sugar. I start with D3, because it's my favorite, and slide from there with a double-spiral back into D2 before I lift my tongue away. Then I drop into D4 and a few D12s, and of course you would be busy executing your work without flaws along my neck, sidling a bit closer as you do, head tipped and eyes shifting back and forth, bracing one hand against my chest until it slips a bit towards my arm, and you lean your forehead (It's a small forehead) against mine until you're so close that the rims of your glasses rub my skin and I can hear the music leaking out of your earbud as a separate song from mine.

And then I just can't take it any more. I embrace you with a groan. As my wings strain to slide and chirp while pinned down against the couch, I hold you so close with the fabric of your sweater rustling against my cheek, because you are my _son,_ the Pixie prince, my alpha retinue, vice president of every department in the company and even some businesses in Fairy World, and you are _absolutely perfect_ , sir. Duh. You commit no errors, you have no faults, and the summary report I file on your work bleeds nothing but praise, and I appreciate you tremendously and all that you do for me and the company, and I am satisfied and proud with our preening sessions twice or thrice every day…

Then I hear one of Longwood's louder remarks slipping beneath the penthouse door and into the hall. And I remember my fantasies are only that. I was not a wanted child. He doesn't see me as his son. No matter how much I wish he would.

Sir, you are the expanses of my universe. I would be nothing without you. I am not nothing, so by process of logical elimination, I should be your everything. Make crows your only bird; make Sanderson your only pixie. Consider giving his shoulder a little pat every once in awhile, his cowlicked hair a little fondle, just as a subtle thank you for all that he does. I promise he would appreciate it. Intermittent schedules of reinforcement may prevent my loyalty from extinguishing and bring me racing back to your side every time I stray too far beyond your circle of influence, yet it's not enough to satisfy my lust and hunger, sir. _But who cares, no big deal, I want more~!_

It does make one wonder why he ever chose to call me "Sanders' son" if he always planned to spend his life denying the relation offered by the second part of my name. Ha…ha…

And I sit up for the first time, groggy and blinking in the hall, and rub my eyes with both hands. The air conditioner has flickered into life above my head, which is a likely sign I won't be getting the dominance licks across my forehead that I crave like bread and water. Not tonight. Not when the air conditioner can filter his pheromones through the company instead; Sanderson, buddy, you can consider your alpha retinue duties outsourced to a machine. Just another stupid job title for Sanderson that takes longer to read than it does to complete. Or apparently _not_ complete.

 _I don't know what I was doin'. When suddenly, we fell apaaa~rt._

Technology is advancing. Those familiar days of intimate preening between a gyne and his drones are a thing of the past. We move forward. Why expend energy engaged in endless licking rituals among a constant cycle of employees when pheromones can be condensed down to air fresheners instead? When you can press your thumb on a nozzle with a _fssssh_ or pass around baskets of star-shaped scented scraps ("Take one and hang it from your rear-view mirror. Pass these down.") Why expend that energy when some companies will turn your dominant gyne pheromones into customized oils, and you can sprinkle cute little drops from a cute little vial into a cute little humidifier on the coffee table in every floor's break room? Why expend that energy when this conditioning of your employees to expect pheromone exposure regularly would totally eliminate the establishing operation that makes them crave your "special Christmas presents" with the furious drooling and whining that so turns your sadism on?

 _"Not today, Sanderson. You've been on my heels all morning, and you should have enough of my scent to flit off and make yourself useful while I take care of some of the others. It will take me hours. Don't expect any preening today. And I have to do the second batch tomorrow; no, don't expect it tomorrow either."_

 _"But sir! I'm the alpha. Let me take some of the burden for you. Give me your licks. I'll distribute your pheromones on your behalf. That's what alpha retinue drones_ do! _"_

 _"Sanderson."_

 _"Sir, why do I even have this job if you won't let me complete my duties? It's not like you pay me for my services."_

 _"Sanderson."_

 _"This is demeaning. You're treating me like a nymph, sir. I can't live like this! I'm suffering physical deprivation. If I don't get my mental release, I'll get inspiration back-up."_

 _"Sanderson."_

 _"Daaad,"_ I whine, putting back my head. One last, desperate attempt to make him snap, and pull me in just to shut me up. Defiant drone neck exposure and all.

 _"Mister."_ A warning instead of a casual remark. My eyelid twitches up.

 _"Fine! If you won't preen me, I'm going to find Smith. He pulls me into the closet and gives me dominance licks whenever I want, no strings attached."_

 _"Sanderson."_ That time a coo that makes me freeze before I reach the break room door. I turn back, instantly extending my hand, my tongue poking between my lips, fully expecting him to take my wrist in a jealous show of dominance and soothe my rumpled irritation. Only to find him instead watching me with the smile of a fairy who's gotten into the rump roast.

 _"Mister Ennet Sanderson Chipixie. Go to your office. Or you're fired. If you need something to do,_ ping _up one of those scratch-and-sniff magazines I know you like to hide under the pen tray in the second drawer of your desk."_

My face blazing- _"Sir! Those are private!"_

 _"You were caught. You had to be punished. Your stash was in the workplace, so it has been confiscated and shredded."_

 _"H.P.!"_

 _"You were careless, and you got caught. Either keep those in your apartment, or be more clever next time."_ His hand below my wings, physically thrusting me through the door and into the hall. _"Now out you go."_

Most especially, why expend that energy when the media has already forgotten the days of platonic faithful loyalty, and turns its sneers on you for your tradition of holding to traditions? Sneers at your lack of free-spiritedness and alleged coerced abuse. _Has Sanderson Slept His Way to Snatterdom?_ The headline haunts me even now- the visible expression of betrayal on his face when I brought him the paper worst of all. _The Head Pixie and his personal assistant were caught red-handed in behavior that could hardly be described as professional. Exposed: Read the true story of Mr. Sanderson's ascension to the top._ As if. Those idiot Fairies hadn't even bothered to check their facts and figure out that when it came to my day job, I cling to the lowest rung of the corporate ladder. The complaints department is a joke. A pathetic secretary position of taking and redirecting calls. A juvenile brownie could do it. That's hardly the top. I've only been in H.P.'s penthouse twice in my life- once when my fury got the better of me and I snapped, and once when he made me sit on the floor with coloring sheets and paints because he thought it would be funny. That's hardly snatterdom.

But I remember their labels. Even now, they sidle along the bottoms of the TV screens during occasional press conferences when the Head Pixie addresses Fairy World on matters of business they don't care for, and they would rather mock him than listen to all the reasons why they should pay higher taxes on their wand waves to benefit the economy and the cloudlands as a whole. _Sanderson's "friend"._

I shouldn't let myself believe pretty lies and statistical unlikelihoods. But maybe tonight, he'll say yes. Tonight could be that one night in dozens, that one night in hundreds, when the action of sticking out my hand and cocking my head gets reinforced. _What you're hoping for will come true- let me be good to you!_

It's fourteen minutes until he'll even step out of the door farther down the hall that hides his private break room (His "It's not my problem right now" room, he sometimes calls it). I can last for seventeen more minutes, kneeling across the hall, staring up at the main penthouse door and drinking in each familiar scar along the wood.

Longwood's in there still, tittering about his summary report for the month. And maybe doing other nice things for the boss out of the kindness of his little black core. _Favors_. Dark and dirty favors. Like dusting his private book collection or washing the floor-to-ceiling windows or shining his shoes. Things that ought to be _my_ job. How repulsive. If anyone does anything, it's going to be me. It's not as though Longwood doesn't get to spend enough time with our boss as it is.

But I'll be patient. I'll be good! I can kneel before his door, sometimes with my cheek to the dirty tile, gazing and gazing. Clicking my fingernails in rhythm beside my ear. _Tun tun tun tun. Tun tun tun tun._ Like a drizzle, or a song.

It's only twelve more minutes. That means it's almost time. I can wait. I'll have my turn. This is my moment. 9:00. The best time of the day. It's constant. It's the only part of my day that's ever perfectly constant. Even if I don't get my dominance licks, I'll get to have my special alone time with the Head Pixie, his wings in one hand and my brush in the other, and that's something beautiful, and that's just fine. I appreciate every last moment I still get to have with him before he fades away to dust.

I am a good drake. The perfect employee. A humble drone. His best-behaved son. I will wait. I'll be patient. We run by his schedule in the company, and I exist only to serve him.

It's only ten more minutes. In ten minutes exactly, the shrine bells will chime. Longwood will be forced out, whether he was finished with his report or not, because H.P. would never, ever allow him to run over and cut into my time.

Nine more minutes of waiting. I close my eyes, just to imagine it. The door will open with its familiar squeak. He'll beckon me in and while he unbuttons his shirt, I'll grab my cloth and wing brush. Oh, it will take a lot of extra waiting just to suppress my wriggling and see us through the actual grooming and evening preparations I have to do as the alpha, but my time will come. I'll offer the cane and he'll refuse, rising without it and ignoring when I reach out to steady his elbow. For about ten seconds, my anxiety will crescendo. He'll smooth his pajama shirt and look at me. Then I'll signal my desire to proceed. He can't extend his hand to me- legally, he's not allowed to. The drone has to make the first move. And I will. I will hold out my hand towards him.

Moment of truth. Rejection or acceptance. He'll pause. Consider. Often, glancing at himself in the mirror first, or checking the clock even though as a pixie he always knows the time. He'll give it considerable thought while I resist the urge to bounce on my heels or clear my throat or groan. "Hmm," he might say, and draw the word out.

Should he choose to favor me, I'll snap the opportunity in an instant. Slip my hands behind his back. Hold him by the knobs of his wings. Dip him down. Sweep him off his feet. _Sanderson,_ he'll scold as my wings instantly strain against his mass and not-quite-weightless-no-matter-what-he-insists weight, _you forgot to put your shades up in your hair. They'll fall on your tongue when you bend your head._

 _Oh. Can you get them for me, sir? I'm already in position._

 _All right._ And I close my eyes as he slides them from my nose. Instead of pushing them into my hair, he folds the arms with a neat _click, click_ and _ping_ s them off. It would help the awkwardness of holding his weight immensely if he would try to float too, though then again, with his wings in my hands, that's not really a possibility. _But let's not make a habit of this._

I wait, watching his face. Waiting for the double tap of fingers against his left collarbone, the signal to proceed, even if it's so often followed by a bored, _Go get it, manticore. You've earned it tonight._ Like he's doing this just for me and wants me to know he finds it a chore, and that he has no intention of being satisfied no matter how well I perform.

I'll stroke his neck with my tongue anyway, and let my shoulders relax and my worries seep away. For just a few minutes, it doesn't matter if either of us have other work we could be doing, or if the Anti-Fairies are rallying for some impulsive and pointless attack to seize control of the Sunrise Skies again, or if the Fairies would sneer and throw around their nasty names and rumors if they were to catch us doing what only comes naturally to a retinue drone and his primary gyne. All I have to do is wait.

I can wait five more minutes. It's only five more minutes. I will wait. I've waited all day for this, and I have no problem waiting just a little longer. I'm very good at waiting. Perhaps the best pixie of all when it comes to waiting.

I…

will…

wait…

…

…

…

… Oh, dust no.

I sit up uncertainly, the gray covers trickling away from my body. I'm in bed. In my bed, tucked in and dressed up in the stripes of my gray and white pajamas. The purple sky, ever-starry, has turned a bit blue and pink outside the window beside Hawkins' empty bed.

No, no… It can't be morning. _Don't let it be morning._

And I bury my face in my hands, and crush my hands against my jabbing knees. I zonked out in the hall and slept through our retinue appointment! The grooming, the talking, the atmosphere, my licks- He didn't wake me up. Just sent me to my room like a naughty nymph. Rejected me. _Rejected me!_ I don't even want to know what the summary report on my desk looks like today.

So I'll have to wait until tonight to take up that wing brush and scrub the dirt and stale magic from beneath the edges of his costas, around the sensitive jugal fold, near the worn knobs of his wings that enter his back in the patch where his skin is all loose and sort of scaly, and technically perforated with holes that fill with water fast and make it so very easy to drown a magical being, left to kick and flail as his exoskeleton floods and drags him down.

Another long day of pining and waiting before I can comb my fingers through that soft white hair. Carry those discarded undershirts down to the laundry and run them myself, because by my crown Rosencrantz shouldn't be allowed to touch something so precious and valuable. Lean my ear against the dryer door and listen to the _wub, wub_ of folded fabric, the clink of buttons and zippers and the tinkling star on his hat lashing against the walls. Another long day before he accepts my offered hand and I dip him down, press my tongue against his neck, give myself to him in full as his loyal drone, his alpha retinue, his most devoted kin, his firstborn, his son, his _prince…_

Smoof, I can't live like this anymore.


	34. (14) Minion

_Summary:_ H.P. has a huge crush and Sanderson is not impressed.

 _Characters:_ Sanderson, H.P., The Fairy Elder, Adelinda von Strangle

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Solo" / "Out of Character"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **14\. Minion** (The afternoon before "Pixies Inc.")

 _Year of Leaves; Spring of the Last Berry_

* * *

"How old are you, Sanderson?"

 _Ow_. I adjusted my shades with my thumb, rattling the loose screw on the right side to disguise the clenching of my teeth. "You don't know how old I am, sir?"

H.P. fiddled with the generic Fairy World grocery store wrapping foil that hugged the flowers in the bin. From the clench of his right hand against the rim of the can, and the way he made the gesture again when he moved to another one, his left hand always rifling meticulously among petals and leaves, I could tell it took everything in him to resist the urge to pluck the mixed bouquets apart and sort them all by color.

I felt no such compulsions; as a matter of fact, I liked to see the flowers grouped purposefully, artificially, in multicolored patterns that someone who understood these things better than me found aesthetically appealing. Jardine liked his plants _au naturel_ , arranged in neat and tidy rows when growing outdoors. And that made absent-minded sense too. But privately, I preferred order in the universe. I liked my flowers trimmed at the stems and tied together, set out on display for purchase. No matter the season, they were always there. Even when plants died outside and down on Earth, you could always plan on finding some inside the grocery store, tame instead of wild.

Idly, I plucked up one of the nightsky petunias and brought it to my nose, just to feel the anthers brush my skin. This batch of flowers came from the Starfields on Plane 7. Identifiable by the sugary sweetness they gave off from entire wingspans away. Smaller but brighter than Earthside flowers, and so much stronger-smelling, they never failed to make me melt.

It was a stupid fatal flaw to have. Flirting I detested, checks written from a client directly to me instead of the company I wasn't allowed to accept, and I had no patience for anyone who attempted to criticize the way I lived my life. Yet stride into my office and offer me a single blossom in an outstretched hand, and I'd go from unwaveringly firm to amused and then outright giddy in wingbeats. A flower? For me? A cheap gift I wasn't expected to pay back? One alone was not enough to deliver to H.P. like an affectionate gift, which made it the perfect souvenir to keep for myself without a fleck of guilt.

H.P. considered flowers akin to jewelry: a decorative pin of sorts to tuck behind your ear. At the start of the war (Oh smoof, don't start me on the war) between the Fairies and the Anti-Fairies over the question of whether humans ought to be considered on level with us as equals, or below us as a race to be godparented and monitored, H.P. had insisted we announce our stance of neutrality by way of flowers. Specifically pink ones. The bright orchids were his favorite. He'd sewn a sort of lei of them by hand, and thrown the entire gray color scheme of the company out the window. He'd even requested his Refracted counterpart design him a hat in white and blue for the occasion. _No_ , he'd told us with his typical wagging finger. _No gray. While this war wages, we're all going to wear white_ … Absently, holding the petunia to my nose there in the grocery store, I reached up to stroke my chin. I'd grown a goatee back at that time. In fact, I'd grown the hair on my head out so long, even the cowlicks Kalysta Ivorie had licked into my hair as a nymph had temporarily faded away. Such a shame to have it all buzzed off in the end.

Flowers were pleasant niceties. I think sometimes that the reason H.P. is always so publicly insistent that his favorite color is purple, not gray, is because he couldn't stand to surrender his beloved flowers should someone choose to argue with him that they were unbecoming of a dull and logical pixie. So long as the universe viewed purple as a Pixie color, flowers could thrive in their hallway planters and along the bushes between our buildings. Always purple ones, most of which Jardine had bred artificially for the color. I didn't like them growing wild, but I did accept them as part of our world anyway.

It's super difficult to find error in flowers; to error was _Faedivus_ , not flora. Color, shape, size, scent- flowers have it all, though the scent, of course, has always been the most important aspect of them to me. I'd trade away my sight before my sense of smell. I considered vision less important- my shades tint all colors dark anyway, and I rarely take them off except in the comfort of my dimly-lit apartment at the top of Rapunzel Tower.

But my sense of smell is everything to me. Anti-Fairies have their hearing. The Refracted have their eyes. Smell and taste, interwoven, are the senses used by Seelie Courters to detect the minute shifts in the magical energy field which dictate our waking lives: where to stand to avoid dropping the lines that connected us to patches where we could breathe, how to approach or avoid an oncoming magical presence, when wind or Fairy-clipses stretched the field too thin and left us magicless and gasping.

And with smell and taste, we picked up on the attraction signals of those around us, able to identify even the facial expressions of someone standing some ways behind our backs. Anti-Fairies don't read expressions that way, I'm pretty sure. We are creatures of nostrils and taste buds, but they use their mouths in a different way. And ears. When they scream. But that only works in one direction at a time, and is nothing, certainly, compared to our ability. If I ever lost my vision, my nose would still let me keep my sixth sense, and I'd hardly be the wiser that it was gone.

Filing paperwork was a job for the eyes. And that was important, too, in its way. But I'd been born a drone. H.P.'s cheeks, so freckled with fading gyne spots when mine were bare, were indication enough of that. But I'd come to learn that even drones had abilities which were all their own. Most importantly - such a constant, daily necessity for drones like me - we could scent pheromones.

All Seelie Courters had them, for that went hand in hand with having insect DNA embedded in your blood. "Imprint" was the fashionable term of the modern age. That word, though, was used only by your commonplace kabouters who didn't understand the two concepts of pheromones and imprints were mutually exclusive. Kabouters didn't have the keen drone nose required for sorting through myriad overlapping layers, picking out who had passed this way how long ago and when, down to their genus, down to their subspecies, and down even, sometimes, to which area of the body the traces had originated from. Magic gathered thickly in the hands (the right moreso) and pheromones were thickest there, in the mouth, and on the back of the neck. Any drone could tell you that.

Even gynes, whose pheromones were always the strongest, struggled to identify their own familiar scent among a dozen of samples which were all unique and absolutely different (Too much ketodecenoic and 9-oxo-2-decenoic acid sometimes, or too little gossyplure, maybe not enough 4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenylethanol, et cetera). Drones were natural trackers, bred to wander among huge groups of authority figures, yet without fail pick out their superior and come running to him (or her, should an unfreckled kabouter be all some pathetic drone could catch) from anywhere. That was biology. That was fact. Drones without a dominant figure in their lives went against Reality's intended design.

I valued my ability to smell, and flowers tickled my senses deeper, perhaps, than even H.P.'s. Boiled down, flowers may be an embarrassing Achilles heel to suffer, but my burden in life to bear. Fortunately, most clients didn't think to bring such things when they stopped by the complaints department. I didn't have to make myself a grinning fool in front of many. No, just… just one crazy lady who visited me so often, she'd figured me out and stitched me up again. Tarrow's curses, Mrs. Cosma.

"Please answer the question, Sanderson," H.P. finally said. "Sometimes I ask you things in order to keep you on your toes."

I nodded agreement, unconvincingly. "I'm 253,163 years in two months, sir."

"Oh smoof, is it April again already?" H.P. squinted at a drooping yellow rose in his hand. "I meant to be finished and done speaking with Gary about the preparations for the Learn-A-Torium before now. The incident with Rosencrantz and Betty on Monday has put us unexpectedly behind schedule."

"Yes, sir," I murmured, deciding not to suggest alternative explanations, such as his own procrastination. He'd agree and shrug; no point in interrupting when I could already anticipate the answer.

"I'm certain he'll perform very well to make up for her. He's a good boy. And such a nice grammar fanatic too; remind me to _ping_ him up to the cloudlands one of these days so he can give a press conference to all of Fairy World explaining how to properly abbreviate my title. Well. If he hadn't panicked and so rudely snatched your starpiece when you brought him to your office, I'd consider giving him a promotion. But. Sensitive, emotional humans. What can you do?" H.P. pressed the yellow rose against his nose like I had and drew in a deep whiff. I resisted the urge to smirk. When you're a drone, you quickly learn whiffing is for kabouters and gynes, and not necessarily for you.

Some people liked to be very rude and insist, occasionally to my face, that drones had no strengths of any kind. A heightened sense of smell may not seem the most glamorous of superpowers. And true, like all magic, the ability wanes when I get too anxious. But trust me, when two hundred and fifty thousand years of your life (and counting) are spent bustling around in an ever-growing cluster of buildings, all your coworkers seemingly identical at a glance, then identifying one another in a way more reliable than sight quickly becomes necessity. Even Longwood gets us mixed up and hovers in the halls, flushing beneath his own light freckles. H.P. remembers, because he bore us and he's our company founder and of course he would remember, but often, Longwood forgets. We tease him frequently just to watch him stammer and fight the puffiness in his eyes. He would make a terrible Head Pixie, and as soon as H.P. realizes that, he'll be replaced.

"I ought to have invited Jardine along," H.P. mused, still pawing among the flowers. He'd deliberately replaced the yellow rose in a full bouquet of yellow blossoms, rather than returning it to the mixed cluster he'd plucked it from. "He remembers all the specifics about damsels and their interests better than I do."

Speaking of pheromones.

The smirk slipped completely from my face and memory. All at once, I recalled why we had come to the grocery store in the first place. These were the Indiana skies, and it wasn't like they were on the way between Inkblot City over Kansas and the Fairy capital of Faeheim over California. The detour wasn't small. The transportation costs had been unanticipated and unbudgeted for. Perhaps I could ring up Hawkins, if he hadn't gone hiking out of cell and magic service, and we could reevaluate the situation together. And while flowers were pretty to look at and nice to smell, who said damsels deserved them? Especially _this_ particular damsel, whose magical amulet had…

Ah, never mind.

"You think this is stupid," H.P. realized, glancing up at me. Pink petals crumpled between his fingers. The constant thrum of the shop's heater filled the air between us. Several aisles to my left, a soft noise like thunder rumbled, and the sprinklers flickered on above the fresh vegetables.

"Sir." The whine crept into my voice against my request. I placed two fingers to the base of my throat, hoping to quell it, but it leaked through anyway. "I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to. I can see it in your eyes."

"Why do you enforce the shades in our standard dress code if you're going to denounce their abilities like that?"

"It's in your wings," he smoothly corrected himself. His fingers moved again towards the flowers, this time so he could stroke a bundle made up entirely of orange. "I can tell it by the way you lean."

I shifted the weight between my feet, then spread my wings and lit from the ground with a soft buzz. "I said nothing of the kind, sir. You know I have the utmost trust in you."

"Sanderson?"

I didn't want to, but I lifted my gaze to his level anyway. Now H.P. clutched the orange bouquet against his chest, his lower lip pressed out in the slightest pout.

"Do you think my idea is stupid?"

For a moment, I inner-turmoiled with my desire to please my boss and the Pixie customs I'd been raised with which valued honesty. But, while Da Rules and even yapping coin sith gave them a free pass (sometimes), white lies were not precisely my area of expertise. Not my department. Relaying my actual thoughts always came easier to me than trying to organize the words in my head that went against them. Many of my coworkers would have lied anyway. H.P. was the boss, and yet he always seemed to recognize when we lied, and then it would irritate him. I knew him better than most of the pixies in the company did. I understood his thoughts more intimately. For all his insistence that his word was law as far as we were concerned, he didn't value suck-ups or yes men. He wanted our validation because we trusted him and he had earned it, not because we hoped to wheedle his favor in the workplace. Yes, as was typical for me, honesty won out over glaze-eyed loyalty.

"It's a little stupid," I said, quietly. "But I support your decision anyway, H.P."

He stared at me, still holding the orange bouquet. Then he sucked in his cheeks so his saliva slurped and his teeth clicked. "I know how this looks, Sanderson. With me bringing her all these flowers. But I assure you, I'm only seeking her out to discuss a matter of business."

My nose twitched. I could pick up on the cologne he'd rubbed underneath his ears. Oh, I'd noticed it the instant he summoned me for our journey out beyond the company walls. Instead of asking me to help, he'd deliberately waited until after I'd finished my retinue duties this morning, too, like he thought my sacred sense of smell wasn't good enough to notice if he snuck it on. He had continued _grooming_ himself without _me_. Behind my back, even. With cologne that smelled of some extravagant Anti-Fairy dish that even I couldn't identify. I fixed my eyes on his ear, hoping he would notice even through my shades, but either he'd been bluffing his ability in the dim light of the store, or he was a smoofing good actor. Both statements were probably true. I unclenched my teeth and managed to say, "You don't need to explain yourself to me, sir. I trust and support you."

He dropped his gaze to the roses. With one hand, he folded back the transparent plastic wrapping. "They're just business flowers. Really. They are."

I nodded.

We paid up front, him refusing to put the flowers down and me skimming my silver credit card through the machine, methodical and bored. At the entrance of the store, H.P. paused. Then he shoved the bouquet into my arms. Thorns pricked my fingers even through the foil. I nearly dropped the bundle, but caught it as it fell. H.P. spun on his heels and marched back to the flowers in their bins.

"Sir-"

"Nope," he said, leaning over the case again. "It's a shame I just had my prescription renewed last week. I couldn't turn a blind eye if I wanted to. We fix this here and now."

With that, he began to tear flowers loose from their careful wrappings. A bead of blood stabbed the air as he pricked his thumb on a thorn, too. My wings twitched forward. My throat sealed shut. But, it was only one drop, and I resisted the urge to swarm to his aid.

Instead, I drifted down one of the neighboring aisles. Since starpiece magic didn't work inside the grocery store, it would take him at least five minutes to get the job done by hand. That's if no employees tried to stop him, which they certainly would, even when today was Thursday and the bare minimum of people were about. But H.P. would keep repeating that word, "Nope," over and over again, louder and louder so no one could get a word in edgewise, and he could pretend old age and failing ears prevented him from realizing what he was doing was wrong… A faint smile tugged in the corner of my mouth. That would be just like him. And then, before I could stop myself, I snorted and shook my head at the ceiling. That would be just like him.

I could leave him alone for five minutes. H.P. had lost the battle against his own patience, and now he had to serve his time. Certainly, he wouldn't slip out of the store behind my back. He and I were a package deal, and if the irritated Fairies threw him out, they'd come straight for me next and remove me too.

There was only one thing I wanted to grab, anyway. A quick thing. Quick enough that even I willingly strayed from my boss's side to fetch it.

"Smoof," I muttered under my lines when I realized I had dropped to my feet and started to sprint. The trim stems of the roses were wet and piercing in my hand. H.P. wouldn't leave me for at least five minutes, and it would take less than five minutes to obtain what I was looking for at a walking pace. These were logical facts, though my mind was still reluctant to accept them. I had dared to step away from H.P., and perhaps my calculations had been off. Five minutes may have been too generous an estimate. Perhaps the employees would call in the Keepers, and the Keepers would call Jorgen himself. He might wrench my boss physically from the premises by the back of his neck and fling him all the way back to Pixie World, not even realizing I would have been left behind in the process.

And okay, so I had a starpiece in the pocket of my suit coat. But-! But what _if_ that starpiece stopped working? What if a fairy stole it from me? What if someone shot me in the wing and I lost my ability to fly? What if I got pinned in jail? What if I were accidentally left abandoned?

I skidded to a halt next to a display of bananas much too green for eating. After a few seconds' hesitation, I changed course and fled back to H.P.'s side. The Dolly Parton CD from the rack I'd been eyeing when we'd passed it earlier wasn't worth risking potentially permanent separation. I probably knew every song on it anyway. I knew all of the songs.

H.P. finished rearranging the bouquets by the time I reached him again. He looked at me with his mouth a few millimeters more crooked than usual in surprise. Great, so he'd finished earlier than anticipated _and_ he hadn't noticed I'd slipped off until I'd returned. What did that mean? Would he have really left me behind?

"My roses," he said unnecessarily, nodding at them in my hands. "Let's go."

We left the grocery store and spent a few minutes lingering in the open air until the effects of anti-theft magic drainage had worn off. Then H.P. flipped out his phone and _ping_ ed us both across the cloudlands to Faeheim. I rematerialized next to him on the end of the Pink Castle's rainbow drawbridge. Together, we studied the three pillars out front and the four yellow flags flapping from its turrets. I handed the roses back to H.P. and said, "Hm."

He glanced at me sideways. "Oh?"

I dipped my head. That was the extent of our exchange, and I cautiously followed him over the bridge and up to the door. We passed through security, signed in at the desk, and were instructed to head down the long hallway on our left until it opened into what had once been a ballroom, but now served as a waiting room for the few visitors allowed access into the Castle. Then we were to turn right. H.P. began to hum and skim his fingertips against the purple hallway wall, but as I trailed after him, I did it with my nose pinched shut and mouth clamped. The fact that the walls were bare of portraits, decorated only with identical white doors, did not help me distract myself. I'm sure it was done on purpose. At least the tiles were checkered with violet and white. Not terribly different from Pixie World, then.

Except for that _stench_.

Before we'd gone very far, I gave in. I grabbed H.P.'s arm and yanked backwards, which almost kept him from moving forward. "Sir, I have to ask you to reconsider."

He peered down at me, a thin smile etching its way across his face. "As usual, I understand, but I reject you and your opinions."

My lips pressed together. Okay, don't get me wrong. I loved H.P. He was organized and efficient, energetic enough for my needs without running us to exhaustion, and he enforced plenty of rules and structure in our lives so we didn't become overwhelmed. That, and he smelled delicious. But he didn't understand drones like he understood other gynes. So when he pried my fingers loose from his arm, I positioned myself directly in his path and allowed my wings to rub together with an uneasy chirp. "Sir, even you can smell her pheromones. It's my duty to warn you that if you continue approaching her, they will overpower yours and you will become a subordinate gyne. And you know what that means for me. Again, as your retinue, I have to ask you to reconsider." I paused, then added softly, "Even though I know you won't."

"I know what I'm doing."

I continued to hover at the entrance of the hall as he continued floating down it. At the fifth door down, he turned back.

"Sanderson? Aren't you coming?"

"I…" I placed my palms against my legs, spreading my fingers. Though not usually the Pixie way, especially for a drone, I forced myself to draw air in through my mouth instead of my nose while I struggled to order my thoughts. "I'd rather not, sir. You know exactly what has to happen."

He placed the fist that gripped the orange bouquet against his waist. "Sanderson, the last time we were here was almost ten thousand years ago. You've licked my neck a million times. You don't think my 253,156 years of pheromones in your brain will survive contact for two minutes against hers?"

I frowned. "Sir, if that wasn't a joke, you will need to clarify your thoughts."

"Never mind," he said with a shake of his head. The metal star dangling from the tip of his hat _tinkle tinkle_ d. He gestured vaguely for me to follow him. I hesitated for another several seconds, then did.

We didn't make it far. After passing two more doors, I wrenched the phone from my pocket and _ping_ ed myself out of my suit and into an identical copy- but in bright yellow instead of gray. When the Head Pixie looked over his shoulder at me, betrayed hurt glimmering faintly in the backs of his guarded eyes, it almost brought color to my skin. I met his gaze for a beat, then attempted to make a move past him. The Head Pixie caught my wrist. Before I could protest, he dragged me three doors back down the hall we'd come from.

"Excuse me," I said, studying the clench of his pale fingers against my slightly tanner skin. "I'm going to have to ask you to let go."

"I'll let go when you're back to wearing the approved Pixie dress code."

Obediently, I followed his direction. My yellow suit vanished with a _ping_ , replaced with the proper color again. H.P. released my hand. "Try harder to stay gray," was his simple suggestion.

"It's not my fault, sir."

He kept a steady eye on me as we again made our way down the empty hall. And when we reached the end of it and stepped out of the passage, into the main waiting area full of white chairs and walls, I automatically switched the colors I was wearing. At the distinct _ping_ , the Head Pixie promptly turned around, took my shoulders, and pressed my back against the sharp corner of the wall. My wings stopped beating. The Head Pixie's large hands, bonier than I remembered from my younger years, pinched my skin- even around the bouquet he still held. He leaned forward.

"Can I help you?" I droned, watching him. A literal said tag, that.

Instead of responding verbally, the Head Pixie stuck his tongue to my forehead, just beneath my cowlicks. Warm, familiar scents of sharp falak beans mingled with the subtle banana tang that lingered around all gynes I knew. Then the sensation deepened, uncovering the deep waft of fresh black ink, the vibrant sting of orange slices, the tight dustiness of old parchments, and most importantly, the infamous cinnamon taste we pixies seemed to carry naturally as a species- all of the Head's gyne pheromones, custom-made after six hundred thousand years of life and meant specifically to appease picky drones like me. Oh, yes, all sorts of scents, such wonderful scents, leaking into my nose. I cleared my throat and squeezed my eyes shut, just… just _smelling_ them. The Head Pixie got in a few rough and irritated licks across my face, moving from my forehead down the bridge of my nose, before I had the sense to reach for my phone and go gray once more. _Ping._

I didn't open my eyes until he withdrew his tongue, still clenching my shoulders. "I did warn you, sir."

H.P. watched me replace my phone inside my coat, hesitate, and channel my magic to switch my suit yellow without removing the starpiece from my pocket again. Then he continued watching as I flicked back to gray. The fourth time I went yellow, I picked out a smirk twitching in the corner of his mouth.

 _Ping._ "This isn't funny, sir."

"I must disagree," he murmured, placing another lick on my face, "because I think it's hilarious."

 _Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping._ Yellow in dress and red in the face, I finally dropped my attention to my feet and resolved to stabilize my jittering thoughts. "Head Pixie, I understand this is sadistically entertaining for you, but I need you to let me pick a side. Using too much magic too fast is going to make me throw up."

"Oh, all right." He released me and motioned with the roses for me to lead the way through the empty former-ballroom-turned-waiting area, with its scattered soft chairs and star-shaped lamps. "But to be frank, yellow is not your color."

I ignored him and took off my shades. Folding them up, I clipped them to the collar of my shirt. And, as an afterthought, I reached up and pulled the pointed hat, also yellow, from off my crown. It was a broken crown, malformed by genetic mutations and lack of proper nutrition since my birth, but wearing a hat of distinctly Pixie culture was simply out of the question right now. Behind me, the Head Pixie exhaled through his nose in what, I imagined, was the closest an emotionless being such as himself could come to disappointment.

"You don't have to come further than the waiting area, Sanderson. I realize this place distresses you. Honestly, I should have left you home. Wander if you wish. Try to find a wet wall with paint you can watch dry, or something. If you wait up front by the Giant French Doors of Time, I'll pick you up and turn you back on my way out."

"That's not your choice to make." I paused. "Sir."

The Head Pixie considered my words as we crossed the room. "Rude. Sanderson, you're pushing your luck with this power fantasy of yours."

"Yes, sir." An arched doorway had arrived on our left. My hands, I realized belatedly when I gestured to it, had been outfitted in white gloves by instinct. I had the instant urge to rub them across a vase or the frame of a portrait to check for dust, but instead I managed to say, "It's this one. Follow me, Drake Head Pixie."

I'd walked these castle halls long ago, but that wasn't how I identified her location. Even the Head Pixie could smell her now- I recognized it in the perking of his brows, the faint quickening in his movements. His own pheromones spun through the air with every flit of his wings, but they were weaker now than they had been in the hall. Good. At least I could expect him to take the change of rank in stride and not thrust me unceremoniously against any more walls. Even for a drone, that was demeaning. But, not demeaning enough that I could resist the urge to lick my lips, trying to pick up any lingering traces of his smell near my nose.

With each passing wingbeat, H.P.'s familiar pheromones flickered away from my detection threshold. The foreign scents of physical dark and liquid cold replaced the warm ink and orange-cinnamon twist I'd long grown accustomed to. I flinched despite myself. Oh, those were Tuatha Dé Danann pheromones, all right. The sheer _reek_ of the stuff could have blasted the powder off a bank of snow. Already I wanted to take a shower. Actually, yeah. I planned to do exactly that. They literally had showers off the waiting room for exactly this reason.

All of a sudden, the Head Pixie put his hand on my upper arm. "Sanderson?"

I took his hand and moved it to his waist. "Please call me Mr. Sanderson. But yes?"

"How do I look?"

"Um…" I eyeballed the bright roses pinned to his side by his arm and tried to keep my gaze off his face. He'd used a certain soft tone when he asked the question. The way he always used to do back when I worked for him, when it was just the two of us, and we weren't engaged in public meetings with the rest of the management team around the conference table. Like we were in his break room alone. He wanted my actual opinion on the matter. A humble drone's opinion, of all things. While lightly flattering, it, well… wasn't. On the surface, the tall pixie with the signature gray star hat seemed the pleasantly dull and boring figure who rattled off both Earthside and cloudland postal codes or the nutrition labels for a hundred different cereal boxes as easily as some people said their ABCs, and snickered over the lips of soda bottles with his lavender eyes dancing as he watched underage juveniles buzz back and forth on sugar highs.

I knew him. But I didn't. I knew those glasses, but not the wide eyes behind them, or the hopeful peak of his brows combined with the strange shy smile sneaking over his face. I knew the light fluffs of his white hair and the single Whimsifinado family swirl curling low from the back, but I didn't know the purple bow tie resting at the base of his neck. The bow tie that rested on top of his usual black tie, because it wasn't exactly a thing he wore often and I doubt he'd thought twice about how many he was wearing. I certainly hadn't put it there during my morning retinue routine. After 253,156 years, I knew every curve of him, every wrinkle of his skin, every silver hair on his arms, but I didn't know that way he hovered barely two inches above the ground, with his shoulders slightly hunched and his chin tilted down towards his neck. Submissive. Subordinate. Willingly. I worried that if I looked too closely, I would pick up signs of honest pleasure about the situation in his body language. That would be confusing.

The lyrics to Longwood's favorite "Bye Bye Birdie" song popped into my head before I could stop them: _It won't last. Not at all. He's too thin. She's too tall._

"You look fine, Head Pixie, sir. But I'll straighten your ties again. They've become unstraightened. You can't meet my boss looking like that."

He narrowed those formerly-wide eyes. The hopeful smile slipped away. "You're fortunate I'm not the jealous type, Sanderson, or I'd have you fired as punishment for quitting without a two weeks' notice."

I shrugged. It had been a long time, I think, since the Head Pixie had actually seen me shrug. We hadn't been big on such body gestures back when I worked at Pixies Inc. Information then had been delivered verbally and crisply. No guesswork. He recoiled, but didn't comment.

"There," I said, turning my attention further down the hall. The unmistakable scent of warm rotting flesh and moldy peaches had grown so immediate, I couldn't have switched my clothes back to gray no matter how many licks the Head Pixie - or anyone, even Mother Nature and Father Time - forced on my face. Around another corner, _she_ appeared. First, a pair of knees, concealed to the ankles in yellow ruffles and ribbons. Her hands, folded, rested in her lap. Then her arms followed with gaping sleeves large enough that I could have crawled inside them easily. Then the rest of her.

The Head Pixie instantly jerked to attention. He swept off his hat and held it to his chest. I plucked my crown from the gravitational field above my head. Behind her came Adelinda von Strangle, with her huge staff raised. Her own hair had long ago turned white to the roots, and she'd cut off her wings before even the Head Pixie had been born, but with her glowing staff, she magically eased the Fairy Elder towards us in a wheeled (yet floating) chair anyway. I dotted a submissive greeting pattern across my neck with two fingers and then bowed. I didn't straighten, but stayed floating there to study the spirals and grooves in the checkered pattern of the tiles. As the last of his pheromones finally crumpled into him, the Head Pixie copied my gesture.

"Isn't she something," he breathed in my ear, like a statement.

I resisted the instinct to plug my nose. I even suppressed the urge to either lift my eyebrows or gag as I peeked past my swooping cowlicks and sized the Elder up. _Towering_ was the first word that came to mind when I looked at her. The Head Pixie had taught me that the Aos Sí had stood at an average of 8'4" when they still wandered the universe. His ancestors even taller than most; with exception of me, who didn't eat much and burned more energy than I took in, pixies were a broad-built stock. And even the Aos Sí had still been a race subject to the Tuatha. I ran quick calculations through my head as I studied the Elder in her chair, and predicted her height loosely around 20'5". It was a really tall castle. While both the two cloudland castles were tall, the Blue was the longer one. The Pink had even more of the height.

The next thing my eyes latched onto was the huge diamond closing the gossamer mourning shawl at her throat. It would have fetched an awfully pretty penny on the human market, and we Fairykind could probably coax some use out of it as a nice bookend or doorstop or something, but its true value ranked far above mere coins and bills. The Fairy Elder ought to have gone the ways of natural things long ago. That enchanted diamond alone kept her soul forcefully grounded to her body, hence the stench of death that had overpowered her "true" pheromones generations back. The longer I stared, the more my skin prickled. I actually threw up a bit in my mouth. Nonetheless, I forced myself to squeeze my eyelids shut and swallow it rather than make a spectacle of myself. Not in front of him. Her.

I switched my attention to something else. Something that didn't suggest I didn't belong here, faux data squirted into some magical matrix and left to sow seed. No. I would not accept the ugly reality that I may be a fused, double-layered, artificial _thing_ pieced together by Mother Nature and Father Time. I was a _person_ of flesh and lines and blood. I was all Sanderson.

Her skin was black. Not brown, but black, black, black, like the whole universe. No Fairy crown floated above her head. Instead, silver antlers branched up from between her sweeping pointed ears, twisting and intertwining. Because of course she wasn't tall enough without them already. There were four antlers, and each one decked out like a tree in the design you'd expect from a temperate season. I couldn't find a single square inch on her face that hadn't been coated beyond all reason with wrinkles. Her eye sockets were hollow, yet they glowed with sheer white as though lit from somewhere within. Her arms and legs were bones. Her skin sagged. It even peeled in a few places to show what lay beneath, like bright stars glowing in the deepest black sky, so "bony arms" was hardly an exaggeration. Well. I might be subservient to her, but my tastes were my own to a certain point, and no amount of pheromones could take that away from me.

"She's something." I chose to leave it at that. The only feature of the Fairy Elder that _didn't_ look or smell or presumably feel or taste mere minutes from death would be her hair. Tall as she was, it lay braided down her back to the floor in brassy waves, distinctly fiery orange in color instead of the pale sunshine yellow of her dress, and Adelinda had to take care not to step on it. Merfolk showed bright tails occasionally, but they weren't technically _magic_ , so they could be excused. Otherwise, orange was not a natural color for Fairies, or genies, or any of the magical creatures in the universe, except the Tuatha themselves. And of course, that's what she was. The last of her race as the Head Pixie had been the first of his.

Adelinda brought the Elder closer with a tilt of her staff, and both he and I stopped bowing and dropped to our knees instead. Our wings stilled. We didn't even rustle them into place against our backs, but allowed them to droop beside us to the tile. I crushed all eight fingers into the hardness of it and curled them until my knuckles flared white.

Nearly two minutes passed in this way. Whether by pheromones or by choice, I found my tongue too heavy to attempt speaking. Even the Head Pixie remained absolutely silent, except for the occasional skitter of his wings. I didn't need to look at him with my eyes to sense his struggle to keep his face straight. Silently, he brushed a line of drool away from the corner of his mouth and replaced his hand to the floor. Gynes. Honestly.

"Fergusius Whimsifinado," the Fairy Elder said at last. Her voice grated and rasped with the squishy scrape of a damsel who had lost her teeth eons ago, and whose mouth stayed dry no matter how much she drank. The Head Pixie had always told me that she remembered the names of every member of the Fairykind in the known universe, and probably every alien too. She was just so perfect that way. Personally, I imagined it took her longer to identify someone than most because it took her nose that much time to penetrate her own stink of undead flesh and pick up on our pheromones at all.

"My goddess." Once he'd greeted her, the Head Pixie grabbed his bouquet and pushed himself back to his feet. He fingered his bow tie, and then his hand moved up to smooth the puffy clumps of hair around his ears. He replaced his hat.

Those empty eye sockets fell on me. "Mister Sanderson."

I stood too, more stiffly than he had. Once I'd returned my broken crown above my head, I crossed the room to take up my expected place at her left arm, beside Adelinda. My gloved hands went behind my back. I bowed again, though with less enthusiasm this time. "My goddess."

Her skeletal hand lifted from her lap. She moved the enormous fingers down to my face - each one taller than I was - and I flinched at once. Instead of touching me, the Elder kept her tent-like hand less than a wingspan from my skin. When I didn't move, she returned it to the arm of her chair. "It is a personal pleasure to see for myself that thou hast recovered completely from the ordeal at our last meeting, Sanderson. The Wise Ancients were correct. Thou hasn't changed a bit. I see thine leg is still limping."

My eyes flashed again to the heavy diamond dangling like a plastic Peppy Meal toy at her neck. I clenched my teeth. No, I hadn't cared for our last meeting. All of a sudden, my body felt three sizes too small. Not even caring that I was breaking Pixie tradition, I made a fast, observable movement and scratched furiously at the crook of my left arm. Oh, it was a snatter of a place to be, trapped between a gyne and a god. On the one hand, the Elder's pheromones gleamed on my tongue like sparkling suns that I could stare at without flinching away, but on the other, even she couldn't overpower two and a half hundred millennia of scent layers quite so easily. Though my body and actions were hers, my brain longed to stand safely beside the Head Pixie again.

But I didn't make a move to do so. As a drone, I had little choice but to passionately serve the most dominant source of pheromones in the area, and for now, that dominant source was a deity, not a dear old friend.

The Elder's glowing eyes, if you wish to call them eyes, wandered from me to the Head Pixie again. Throughout our exchange, he had said nothing, done nothing, but float less than two inches above the ground with an unmistakable expression of pining scrawled over his entire face. He still pressed the orange flowers to his chest. The tip of his tongue poked out from between his lips. His wings chirped every few beats. Even his legs began to tremble at the knees. _Poor man,_ I thought absently as I studied him. He wasn't half as used to switching roles as I was. Apart from the constant twitching in my nose as I tried not to inhale the reek of death, I stood as steadily beside the Elder as I ever stood beside him. But the Head Pixie wasn't like me. He had no concept of altering allegiances on a whiff and a whim. Instead, nature forced his mind to bend, his perception to shift, his puzzled instincts to manifest in the only way a gyne could possibly understand.

Rivalry towards drakes who expressed dominant behaviors. And lust towards dominant damsels.

I knew no other word for it. True romantic affection was out of the question, for love was an abstract emotional concept and nothing I understood. Lust was biological, lust was mechanical, lust made _sense_ in a gruesome, despicable way. In my youth I hadn't been able to recognize the difference between the two, which had caused no end of confusion millennia ago when staring down at his original copy of _Origin of the Pixies_ down in the Labyrinth with a quill gripped in my fist and my eyebrows arched. I did not understand kindness, charity, changing hearts, and knew only that my boss would never succumb to such petty, unfalsifiable beliefs either.

Obsession, now _that_ I could comprehend. By the distinct natures of our biology, my own "infatuation" with the Fairy Elder manifested differently than his. Drones were natural fair-weather friends and sycophant servants. Even I, though minutes ago I'd loved him fiercely, had no power to alter my fate. For kabouters (and, especially, gynes) it was confusing to watch our colors change in a snap. Hurtful, even, that we could so easily abandon someone who fed and cared for us in instant favor of someone we'd never met. Yes, hurtful even for pixies, pallbearers of emotion they may claim to be. Even a pixie gyne must be hurting to see me now. Hurting, and lonely, and confused, and dripping with lust and fearful anxiety. And thus, I looked back at the flushing Head Pixie with pity in my brain, without a thought of blame or hypocrisy.

This was not my fault. This was not his fault. It did not matter whose fault it was. Neither of us mattered to each other right now. One thing alone mattered, and she was the Fairy Elder.

The Head Pixie's wings chirped like an imp's again in the silence. The Elder, with a groan, relaxed her back against her chair. "What a pleasant surprise it is that I mayest visit with thee both. Is it mine birthday? Perhaps Valentine's Day? I confess I had not been informed thou wert coming."

I watched his face without mirth. It had brightened into crimson. The same shade as a piece of fabric that was also bright crimson. I didn't even know pixies could turn that color. He must have forgotten I was looking, or he didn't care, because he shifted the roses in his arms and slipped his thumb inside his mouth. The nail splintered between his teeth. "Good morning, Yvainna. You're as radiant as usual today."

Her chin lifted. "I see thou art as charming as thou hast ever been, Fergus."

He giggled an actual, nervous monotone giggle before he could stop himself, hugging the flowers again to his breast. His fingers popped from his mouth and went to his cheek. The others curled against the stiff cotton of his suit. At some point, when I hadn't been watching, he'd turned the fabric from gray to yellow. "We've got to stop meeting like this. Could I perhaps buy you a coffee sometime, dear Elder?"

"Thy sentimentality is appreciated, Head Pixie, but I must refrain."

He drifted closer, never removing his eyes from her face. He ended up a mere wingspan away from me. Then his wings began to beat more rapidly, fighting the natural pixie curse that always left us hovering near the ground rather than granting us the ability to fly high. It was a struggle that sent beads of sweat marking his brow, but he rose until he ended up level with her lap. Once he could position himself above her knee, remaining airborne was easier. Adelinda and I watched him place the tiny orange roses among the ruffles and folds of her sweeping dress. With considerable physical effort, and possibly some help from his starpiece, the Head Pixie lifted her hand in both of his (it was longer from wrist to pinky than even his pointed forehead) and kissed her middle knuckle. "I understand your careful diplomacy. But my offer is forever available if you should change your mind. I meant it, what I said. About you being radiant."

"What?"

I repeated his comment in half a shout. The Elder, slightly more befuddled, somehow, than she normally was these days, begged he say it again. She touched her tall pointed ear for emphasis, and the Head Pixie obeyed her request, much louder than before. When he had, she tilted her head. "Mine pheromones art clouding thy judgment. I didst not brush mine hair today, nor hast make-up been applied."

"And I'm not the type to mind." After lowering her hand, the Head Pixie's fingers slid behind his back. His eyes dropped. With a gentle kick, he scuffed the folds of her yellow dress with his shoe. "My fair lady, if we can take this conversation elsewhere, there's a private matter of business I wish to discuss with you."

Adelinda and I cleared our throats at the same time. "The Fairy Elder does not entertain visitors in private," she said.

The Head Pixie temporarily disappeared from my line of sight as picked his way across Yvainna's lap like a sailor on a skyship. I tracked his signals. Soon enough, he reappeared from behind her arm with his hands and chin resting on her wrist. He stuck out his tongue. "She does for me. Let's not deny I've always been her favorite."

While I understood lust, in theory, I still twitched my nose at the insinuation. Adelinda and I shared a glance. She tightened her fists around her staff, and the Fairy Elder's chair twitched forward. As one, in silence, we flicked our attention upward to hear her rule on the matter. She'd already slumped to one side, asleep, with sticky drool glazing a path to her shoulder.

"You're a lovely couple," I drawled. "Such a loss for the single elderly everywhere."

"I want a whole litter of white-haired, wrinkle-faced nymphs," he murmured. Even from where I stood, I could hear the words. When I processed the underlying meaning of the statement, I crossed my arms. Longwood's song picked up in my ears again.

 _Hiya, Hugo! Are ya stupid? Whatcha wanna go get pinned for?_

"Would you kindly?" Adelinda asked, offering me her staff. Her thick brows had scrunched her eyes to slits.

"Would I? Dame, it would excite my neurotransmitters." She placed it in my arms. I staggered beneath the weight, but managed to keep upright. Of course I wouldn't dare _use_ the thing, but I couldn't just let it touch the floor either. Adelinda grabbed a horizontal bar on the back of the Fairy Elder's massive chair. Then another bar, and another, heaving herself up as the Head Pixie watched curiously from the Elder's wrist. By this point, he'd settled himself completely on top of it, and he made no attempt to move as Adelinda slid down the Elder's shoulder and trotted along her forearm towards him.

It took both her arms to push him off, and when she had, she perched on one of the Elder's knuckles. Her legs, not nearly as muscled anymore as her son Jorgen's but still vaguely reminiscent of her prime nonetheless, dangled like slabs of cold meat from the ceiling of a walk-in freezer. "Excuse me," she said, staring the pixie down as he slunk a step back. "I stand as the primary caretaker and confidant of the Fairy Elder. She does not entertain visitors in private."

I shifted my position so I could observe the scene with my eyes as well as my magical senses, taking care not to scrape Adelinda's staff along the wall (How the Elder and her floating chair even fit in the hallway was a mystery my simple drone mind could not comprehend, arched ceiling or not). The Head Pixie smiled, hands clasped at his waist. "Fair enough, Dame von Strangle. While that's a shame, it doesn't change the fact that I need to talk to her. It's about the Fairies who have been encroaching on Pixie World property. They're being mean."

Adelinda frowned. "I have no trust in you. I do not like you. This coming summer marks the thirty-seventh anniversary since Cupid and the Tooth Fairy chased you and your assistant out of Las Vegas for sneaking those Amity licenses off your sister and attempting to impersonate the godparents of no less than eleven children. _All at the same time._ I believe you yourself did remind us all at the Council meeting - a month ago, yes? - that you and your pixies have been plotting to seek revenge on Fairy World this year as is your ridiculous tradition."

I watched with passable amusement as the thin smirk dropped from the Head Pixie's face. "Oh. Yes. That does sounds like something I would let slip in public." Then his face straightened. His hands moved to his waist. "And immediately after that, you dropped that lava lamp with the genie straight into Flappy Bob's lap. Thankfully I had confederates who were able to intervene (even if the results were distasteful), but I don't think you realize what you almost did. That alone wouldn't have been so bad, but Anti-Cosmo had a fit when he heard and rang me up at three in the morning. Something about the bottle not passing regulation, something about saltwater… Honestly his accent thickens when he's upset and I stopped trying to decipher it millennia ago."

"Ha!" Adelinda slid down from the Elder's hand and jabbed a finger at his chest. "I knew it. I _knew_ your human clown would play a role in your big, dumb takeover plan."

"Yes, you're very smart. He's useful and I like him. Under, ahem, _Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle_ , I believe you aren't allowed to interfere in my transactions with humans unless I either reveal the existence of the cloudlands or directly cause a human physical injury. I have not. I have gone out of my way, in fact, to ensure that human in particular has not been harmed. Despite his best efforts to throw himself into danger, apparently." He lifted his eyebrows. "Does that bother you, dame? It's fine if it does. It would bother me. But the fact remains, dumb Fairy laws prevent you from getting in my way. Even if I've confirmed I will be launching one of my revenge schemes this year, and even if you know where I will likely act and who I may be utilizing as a pawn, you can't stop me." Each of those last few words, he spit like their own sentence, wings beating rapidly until their noses were nearly bumping.

"My son and I will not be taking our eyes off Dimmsdale for a second."

"Do it," he said, softly. "Send in your patrol of godkids to stop me. March them straight through the Learn-A-Torium doors and onto Pixies Inc. property. Maybe you'll find a find a weak point in our plan that Sanderson and I didn't catch and correct."

That was my name. And… that was my old job. Adelinda realized it at the same time I did. As I inhaled sickly pheromones through my nose, she turned and stared down at me. Her fingers snapped once. "Spill your guts, pixie."

I stayed quiet, glaring up at her as the Head Pixie widened his eyes behind her shoulder. When she made as though she might leap down and approach, it was a steady process- not the quick, unexpected lunges forward that the Head Pixie (more than Anti-Sanderson, or even the Dame Head) were well known for. Apart from shifting her staff in my arms, I didn't move. The wingless Adelinda positioned herself, fuming, at the tip of the Elder's knee.

"Pixie, you wear the colors of our goddess. For the good of the Fairy nation, reveal to us what you know."

"Adelinda, I'm gone, but I'm not that far gone. I'm a drone. Not a computer program. While my present loyalties lie with the Fairy Elder over the Head Pixie, I'm able to perceive that if he should accept me back upon her leaving, I will again belong to him. In this likely scenario, it would no longer benefit me to share that information with you. I don't discuss my ex with current employers."

She leaned backwards, grasping white curls in her fists. The Head Pixie chuckled, dryly. "Catch me if you can, Adelinda. You can't. I think I've planted enough red herrings to occupy your forces until it's too late." Keeping his hands where they were on his waist, he squinted up at the Elder. "Should we wake her up? Seriously, those delinquent Fairy punks have been slicing off chunks of my Pixie World cloud for weeks now. We should talk about that. If this keeps up, they could unbalance the whole structure of the vapor and cause a collapse. My city plummets straight to Kansas. They're annoying and I'm losing my patience." Then he went stiff. "Oh- hello, my goddess. You're awake."

"Mmm…" She lifted her drooping sleeve to her eye sockets as though yawning had resulted in tears. When she shifted, her knees rocked slightly. Adelinda stumbled, grabbing the Head Pixie's elbow to avoid tipping over. He studied her in amusement until she realized what she'd done and shoved him away. The Elder tilted her head down. "I didst doze off?"

The Head Pixie drifted along her arm up to her shoulder. "There are no hard feelings. I'm devoid of all but one feeling, of course. You work hard and you deserve a rest now and again, Yvainna."

I mouthed "Work hard?" in Adelinda's direction. She was too busy glancing between my ex-boss and our current one to notice. It was my understanding that these days, our Fairy Elder was little but a public figurehead. She'd delegated her political and magical powers to the seven Council Robes not long after the Sacred Revolution. The great sword Claímh Solais was her one claim to magic now, and even that was purely ceremonial.

The Fairy Elder watched him skim along her arm. She lifted her hand towards her shoulder, slowly, grimacing, and the Head Pixie lighted on her fingertips. When she brought him to her torn and sunken cheek, he kissed it politely and questioned, "And you will help me with my little problem, won't you, sweet goddess?"

"We can discuss such a thing."

Adelinda folded her arms. "Do not rashly succumb to any urge to meet with him in private, my lady."

The Fairy Elder chuckled, and I watched warm color rise in Adelinda's cheeks. Still cradling the Head Pixie near her cheek, the Elder patted one fingertip against her confidant's head. "Faithful child, thou art insulting me. I count Fergusius Whimsifinado among mine dearest friends, and I hath bestowed the utmost confidence in him and in his gentlemanly respect."

Every muscle in Adelinda's face tightened. Her throat constricted. I again shifted her staff, adjusting my weight between my feet too, and fought not to copy her posture. In the Elder's hand, the Head Pixie leaned a smug shoulder against her thumb.

"You can run along and play with Sanderson, Adelinda. You know I'll take good care of our dear Elder while we engage in our…" His eyes wandered up to her face, and his smile became another smirk. "… discussion."

 _Lost your marbles! Are you nutty?_

The Elder turned her blank eyes on him, the chuckle still dancing on her wrinkled lips. "And thou remaineth a charmer. But, Adelinda shall remaineth in mine presence for now. Thou canst close thy mouth and not waste thy strength. I assure you, we shalt discuss matters of business today."

A flash of undisguised irritation zipped across his face. Adelinda perked up. But, the Head Pixie shrugged his annoyance away. He removed his hat again. "And, you'll have to give me a dominance lick or two to suppress my lingering pheromones, my goddess." So saying, he angled a finger down at me. "After all, Sanderson is here. Even when I wear your yellow, he does a good job of keeping me turned on."

I resisted the urge to shoot him a miffed glance that said, _Explain in a pamphlet how this is my fault._ Instead, I shut my eyes and clenched Adelinda's staff. But even with my eyes tightened, irises softly glowing against my lids, I could pick up their respective movements in the energy field. The Fairy Elder could have swallowed him. Easily, her mouth was large enough. She wouldn't have even had to chew, but only flick her tongue and he'd disappear into her gullet. Quick as a snapping snake. The thought ought to have concerned me, I suppose, but the Head Pixie was not my gyne now and I observed with only absent interest.

The Elder put out her tongue, but instead of swallowing him, she touched the tip tenderly to the wrinkles on his forehead. His wings chirped again, and the whine that left his mouth wasn't quite Fairykind, so much as it was something deep and primal. Against Pixie teachings, but evidently not against base pixie instincts, I cringed with each of her gentle movements. Though her forked tongue brushed over his face and not mine, every lick she made buried his comforting, familiar Head Pixie scent deeper and deeper beneath her own rotting corpse one.

I drummed my fingers against the staff. _Did they really get pinned? Did she kiss him and cry? Did he put the pin on? Or was he too shy?_

… In fact, I actually made it through the entire "Telephone Hour" song twice over ( _with_ the appropriate mental voice shifts!) before the Elder had finished. When she finally withdrew her tongue, the Head Pixie stepped back with a ditzy, dopey grin. He sat down on the pad of her hand with a flop to fan his face with his collar. His reaction made the Fairy Elder smile once again and shake her head. Her antlers threw out sparks when they scraped against the ceiling.

"My goddess," I interrupted, raising my voice. "With your kindly consent, my primary gyne is officially yours for the afternoon, and that's my cue to step out."

"Hmm?" The Head Pixie still had one hand pressed to his cheek. When he opened his eyes, he blinked down twice at me before he registered my words. "Oh. Oh, good dust, yes. Give us some privacy, Sanderson. It's just common decency."

Without my shades on, perhaps he could see it from up there in her hand, and perhaps he couldn't. I figured that even if he looked, his mind had to be a thousand cloudlengths away. So, I rolled my eyes. "Yes, sir. My goddess?"

 _Is it true about Kim? I just knew it somehow_ …

The Fairy Elder studied me with her unseeing, blistering gaze. "Adelinda, if thou wouldst release Mister Sanderson from the duty of bearing thine staff?"

 _I must call her right up_ …

Brimming over with reluctance, Adelinda slid down the Elder's lap, hopped from her foot, and landed lightly on the floor beside me. She reclaimed her staff and made a flickering _shoo, shoo_ motion with her hand.

 _I can't talk to you now!_

"I'm going, sir," I cut in as the Head Pixie had begun to speak. His wings went rigid at this breach of protocol. He twisted to gape at me, perhaps to scold me for my mid-sentence interruption, but I met his gaze. "I will await you patiently in the waiting room down the hall, under the impression that you will finish here and then shower before you make the attempt to turn me. An act that I endorse only because it's my understanding that the Elder is willingly to release me from her service should you indeed wish to reclaim me as your own." And then, somehow restraining every ounce of sarcasm that begged to leap from my voice, I added, "Beloved goddess, may I have your consent to be excused?"

She granted my request as though it made up for everything. She and the Head Pixie, pushed magically by Adelinda, moved off into one of the great neighboring rooms and shut the door. It was a big door, painted yellow (of course), with a smaller door in its base at von Strangle height, and an even smaller one for Fairykind closer to my own size. That door had a little window. I lingered outside it, leaning my back to the wood.

From there I could stretch out my legs and cross my arms. Glancing in occasionally from that position, I could just watch them go through the motions. Adelinda stood on the other side of the door, out of sight but not out of range of my magical detection abilities, which meant she could pick up on my attraction signals too. The Head Pixie had been relegated to the floor. He paced in front of the Fairy Elder, gesturing with one of his arms as he presumably explained the situation about the delinquent Fairies robbing us of physical chunks of our vapor. New land, he pleaded. We needed power to expand our cloud, or at the very least we needed someone with heavy authority to crack down on this inappropriate behavior. If she would just let us have new land. He'd pay for everything if she simply authorized the expanding permit and magic usage. The Elder reclined in her chair, softly sucking on huge balls of chocolate with slurping gums as she listened.

I unclipped my shades from my collar and tapped one lens against my teeth. This was a swell predicament. Surely the Fairy Elder wouldn't finish up in there and then leave down the hall without me. We were a package deal, a goddess and her drone. My eyes wandered up the purple walls. I might be working here instead of Pixies Inc. now, but at least the color scheme was the same. Did the Fairy Elder reside permanently in this building, or was she relocated to a safe, secret location every night? Even we Pixies didn't remember filing away the answer to that. It sounded like something I should know before I should chance to get lost in the Castle tonight without her.

Hmm… I considered the existence of the Elder's pheromones. They were layered down so heavily in these halls, a constantly overwhelming presence, that even my separation anxiety might not kick in if I didn't let it. Probably, I could make it to the showers before the lonely panic could seep into my brain and trigger my instinct to hunt down the nearest figure of dominance. Then again, were her rotting scents so thick that showering would prove to be pointless? Might I rid myself of the Elder's influence briefly, only to end up snatched in it again the moment I stepped out with a yellow towel around my waist?

But hadn't I also made a promise to the Head Pixie that I would shower and meet him in the waiting area? And wasn't the Elder my boss? I wrestled with these two conflicting scraps of information, chewing on the arm of my shades. Head Pixie. Fairy Elder. Which one did I hold more loyalty to? The gyne who'd nursed me from nymphhood, or the drooling god prone to random acts of napping? Conundrum.

I discarded the question after only a few seconds of toying with it. Maybe it didn't matter where my puzzled loyalties lay. After all, the Elder _had_ dismissed me, and she _hadn't_ told me _not_ to use this time to take a shower. Obviously, those two geriatric giants would be occupied "discussing" things for a while. Could I finish with my shower before she crumpled his tender, er… "feelings" with her gentle but constant rejection for probably the dozenth time? If I knew the Head Pixie, he would almost certainly-

" _Head Pixie_ ," Adelinda snapped. My dangling wings flew forward towards my knees with a flutter. Whipping around, I checked through the window just in time to watch the Head Pixie jerk back from the Elder's elbow. His palms shot to his cheeks. I narrowed my eyes and tossed my vision into field-sight. That didn't work because I couldn't see through the window that way to confirm traces of his magic along her skin, but even a drone like me realized he'd been occasionally planting kisses up her forearm between his words. I flipped my vision to normal colors again and drearily wondered what else he might have done to her in the process. Keeping up with what the current penalty was for biting the Fairy Elder hadn't been my job, and frankly, I didn't want to know.

The Elder shifted her empty gaze. "Beloved Adelinda. Allow Fergus to act upon his instincts as feeleth natural. I am Tuatha, and my presence doth overwhelm his better judgement. I know he be a decent man beyond these walls, and I mindeth not if even he cannot resist mine influence when confined in the same chamber."

"As feels natural?" the Head Pixie echoed, scooping the discarded roses from her lap. I turned away with a groan. But not before I caught the glitter in his eyes. This was going to be a long afternoon. _He's in love with Kim; Kim's in love with him._

I itched my skin, nails slicing even through my new gloves. Dead cells and and purple dust drifted to the tiles. These Tuathan pheromones were unfamiliar to me, and sooner or later I really did want to check out the showers. When I next peeked through the window several minutes later, the Head Pixie lay back across the Elder's ocean-wide lap with one leg folded over the other, his arms behind his head, and the second dopiest grin of his life plastered across his face. Yeah, I was done here. As far as I was concerned, I wasn't.

He just wasn't… the Head Pixie anymore, subordinate like that. The man whose hair I carefully combed, whose face I gently washed, and whose wings I so tenderly scrubbed with my fat black brush every night during my retinue duties was intimately familiar to me. While I didn't understand how his brain worked half the time (That's why he was the boss, after all), I'd grown accustomed to picking up on his little fidgets and inner cogs. _My_ H.P. had never let his stiff demeanor slip that way when tingle-fritzy before. Not even for me. He'd never slipped and let on that he enjoyed any sort of physical contact even back when our dominance licking rituals were regular events between a drone and his gyne. Way back before modern technology had come along with all its sickeningly artificial ways to spread pheromones through the company halls. The Pixies Inc. ventilation system had shafts so wide, Gary and Betty used to crawl through them with hardly a squeeze in their younger years, I swear…

Ha ha. Right then, the man in her lap seemed as foreign to me as one of the pixies from the Beanstalk Tower who worked down in the warehouse by the cloudship dock, and whom I never saw except during rare instances when sometimes I saw them. All right, I thought. The king is dead. Long live the queen.

I flared my collar and floated off down the hall. "Now, Sanderson," I scolded myself as I went. "I'm going to go subordinate on purpose, disregarding all risks of losing you forever." Not bothering to switch the way I did the voices for obvious reasons, but throwing in the slightest whine anyway, I cried back, "But sir, what if you can't go dominant again? Your pheromones are already weaker now than they used to be a hundred thousand years ago. They fade too fast from my head. What if you lose me and then you're too weak to turn me back? Sanderson! Don't question my authority. Just get up and walk out of the Castle when I do. Just try harder to stay gray. You won't miss me once the loyalty pendulum swings towards her anyhow."

Ending the reverie with a shake of my head, I snorted to the ceiling again, as I had back in the grocery store. "I haven't been forced from a gyne since the incident with Aspen. First the Fairy Elder. Who's next to snatch me up? Anti-Cosmo? Ha ha, ha ha. Anti-Cosmo staying dominant for longer than five minutes at a time. What an idea. Huh. In theory, it could totally happen if I end up in Anti-Fairy World and he rinses me down." I winced. "No. Smash the thought, Sanderson. Anti-Cosmo wouldn't place a finger on the Head Pixie's alpha retinue. Yes he would. He respects the Head now, but those pheromones are certainly on their way out. Can't pinpoint the exact time frame, but they're fading, and there's no question about it. The Pixies will need a new gyne, and if I have to spend the rest of my life fawning over Longwood, I'll hurl paper mâché."

I stopped floating forward and frowned at the sign on the wall that proclaimed there were showers near. Well, I supposed the fate of Pixie World wasn't important. Or rather, the importance of it was to be determined. The Fairy Elder wasn't actually a gyne, and since her pheromones could easily sway all of Fairy World, she had a policy of not keeping us when we automatically turned. She let everyone go freely. Even drones. Logically, I _knew_ that. But in the same way I pined after the Head Pixie when I strayed too far from his circle of influence and lost his taste in my nose, as a drone, by rule, I physically had to function right now totally believing she'd never give me back at all. Every time the Head Pixie left my side, he left me with no promise that he'd ever come back, regardless of what words he spoke or how many times he'd returned in the past.

I tugged my tie with my thumb and forefinger, twice. In a fight between my logic and my biology, the latter was rapidly winning out. The Head Pixie had entered his senescent stage of life. These wings were his last, his familiar freckles had faded pale white against his skin with age as Longwood's had reddened, and I'd watched from the sidelines as it took longer and longer for him to satisfy the needs of each and every drone. The Head Pixie's influence over me was dying, and that was more terrifying than him actually dying, which he was, but not nearly as fast. At this rate, I would outlive his pheromones before he outlived his body. That was basic fact. Some random gyne would walk past me someday soon, and I would make a choice that wasn't a choice. Biology over logic. Pulled from from the Head Pixie long before he ever died.

No. Not pulled. Leaving him willingly with my own four wings. Not even caring. Not even missing him. Not sparing him a second glance or thought for the rest of my happy life. Not bothering to say good-bye. And that, I think… was my greatest fear in the universe. The Head Pixie tossed away and left to die alone. And Sanderson abandoned to lick the oils off the freckled neck of someone who, in a matter of wingbeats, he would instantly come to love more.

"Disgusting," I muttered, clenching the front of my suit in my fist. My wings spun and whirred with a buzz. They clipped a bust of Prince Eastkal situated on a podium. He tipped, but didn't fall. I took the next left randomly. "But true. He's getting weaker and you're a turncoat. You can't go as long or as far as you once could without racing back to him. Face it, Mister. The Head Pixie is dying."

I hovered for a few seconds, shuffling through my muddled thoughts and trying to take a survey on whether or not I cared. It didn't seem like it was my business. My place was with the Fairy Elder. Right now, the fate of the Head Pixie was none of my concern.

 _I could leave him_ , murmured a soft voice inside my head. It was a soft voice, you see, because that was the part of my brain that gave me innovative ideas, and obviously it didn't get a lot of use.

"Leave him?" I studied a new sign directing me to the showers again and buzzed down the proper hallway. Not quickly enough to shake away my own stabbing doubts.

"Why not? He suspects I will. He's always known my loyalty is frugal."

"It is not," I mumbled, but the sweat had begun to bead on my brow. I mean, it was difficult to argue when here I was decked out in yellow. With fumbling fingers, I shoved my shades back on my nose and felt my pockets for my hat. "Sanderson, her scent is weaker now that you've come this far. We can fight it. I can wear these things again, see?"

"It's not like I'm the company vice president, or the Pixie ambassador to the Council. It's not like I'm legally tied to stay."

"But I like Pixies Inc." I placed the pointy hat on my crown again. "I like my office, and my apartment, and the benefits I get from working there."

"Maybe I shouldn't procrastinate this decision. Then again, I've got time. As long as I'm not vice president or Pixie ambassador, I'm sort of free to leave whenever I choose."

"I'm a drone. I can't just walk away from his pheromones."

"I can if they're not there."

"Legally, I am over age of majority. _Whimsifinado v. Caudwell_ does not apply to me. Still, leaving the Head Pixie and the company would be wrong."

"I gave myself to Anti-Cosmo once."

"That was an accident."

"Not the second time."

"Stop it. Stop it." I halted my skim and flattened my back to the nearest purple wall. Throat silently aflame, I dug my fists against my eye sockets. If I were in Pixie World, I wouldn't have leaned over. But my practiced mannerisms had been slipping ever since I'd floated in here. Back home, the Head Pixie's pheromones were overpowering because he had certain ways he wanted things done. He had rules. Dress code rules, body language rules- rules that evaporated the instant his aura collided with the Fairy Elder's. She believed in free expression. Thus, we drones were encouraged to unconsciously express ourselves freely, within reason. And what had I done? Gotten one whiff of her in my nostrils and ripped away the color, the shades, the stiff posture, and even the hat that marked me as a Pixie. Right in front of him.

"He's fading. I'm his favored retinue drone. I get to look at his face during scripture reading every night. I've watched those freckles fade."

I leaned even further forward, my wings still pressed to the wall. Pixies didn't think in pictures, or vague thoughts, or at least I didn't think we thought that way. We thought in words. Each word printed across our brains with a heavy thump one at a time like a big rubber stamp, half unable to predict the ends of our own sentences, or at least half not wanting to, and either way always struggling to let a sentence drop early- easier to carry it out.

"If I left the Head Pixie while he was weak, Longwood couldn't take me for his own."

"That's unimportant. I belong to the Fairy Elder."

"See how easy it was? To trade a lifetime of loyalty for momentary pleasure?"

"Pleasure?"

"Anti-Cosmo still smells like chocolate."

"He always smelled like chocolate since Sugarslew," I agreed with myself. "Beautiful, thick white chocolate. Salt and seaweed too once the modern Water Temple went up."

"If not him, there are a thousand other gynes. Two thousand other gynes."

I hesitated as I completed my own thought. "Two thousand… other… gynes. Every one of them deliciously different compared to the last." For a moment, I dared to let the fantasy play out in my head, me pleasuring myself with upwards of a million pheromones washing over my tongue, but in a sequence rather than a clashing mess. So many gynes, so many smells. Gynes who would pay more attention to me than the Head Pixie ever did.

Then I squeezed my shoulders. Just once. Unfolding my arms again, I placed both hands to the wall and pushed myself upright again. "I serve the Fairy Elder. Get a hold of yourself, Sanderson."

With that gentle scolding, I buzzed my wings and flew down the hall again. Oh. With my nerves distracted and on end, I'd gone around the building's lower level in a huge circle. No wonder I'd thought at one point that the Elder's pheromones seemed so far away.

I'd made it back to the Castle's waiting area, with its generally open walls, sizzling fireplace, plump couches, smudgy glass coffee tables, crumpled newspapers, dog-eared books, rolled-up magazines, and even a few simple board games. Everything was white. Just plain white. Except the fire. That would be weird.

I found the place still deserted. Understandably. Today was Thursday, after all. Only the highest-ranking persons (and retinue drones like me) even had the authority to wander around in here, let alone seemingly unsupervised. On top of that, Faeheim always quieted down when Thursday came around. The Big Wand needed to turn off come midnight and recharge through Friday morning. Fairies were down to the last dregs of their week's supply of magic. With the exception of a few grocery stores, sugar bars, and Keepers departments (and obviously political establishments such as the Pink Castle), everyone closed their shops. Everyone had the day off. Thursday was a time to put thoughts of entertaining guests out of one's head, and simply relax at home. We were magical beings capable of surviving for hundreds of thousands of years, easy. We could afford a day. Once a week, efficient as the clock in Comet Falls that rang out the seasons each year, our entire world slowed down. And it worked for us. Even we pixies got restless and were released from our duties early on Thursday, and the stars help anyone who tried to drag us back to our offices before noon on Friday if we didn't want to go.

So the waiting room was empty. I passed through it and approached the restrooms on the opposite side. They branched off to either side of a decorated alcove. I didn't even have to check the signs to know which one I wanted. My nose did that for me. Though, it was the scent of soap, water, and perfume that rose above any other stink that might normally have filled the area. Just as in the waiting room, I was the restrooms' solitary occupant.

"Logically, the Fairy Elder will give me back to him when time is up."

I frowned, shoving the first of the four shower curtains aside with my hand. "Then I'll serve the Head Pixie."

"For how much longer? He's fading. Why not give myself to Anti-Cosmo?"

"He wouldn't take me," I said as I peeled off my first glove.

"Oh, so you've asked lately."

"Shut up, Sanderson. You're talking to yourself again." The entire conversation was verbal- I always argued both sides verbally when faced with strong conflicting decisions, at least when I was alone, because silence was the worst, and because being without strong pheromones was the worst, and because silence _and_ lack of pheromones was the _worst._ "That's stupid," I continued aloud, hanging up my tie, then unbuttoning the coat of my yellow suit. "Anti-Cosmo is an Anti-Fairy. Okay, yes. Sometimes he plays a particularly dominant role when he stops by, and I will admit that chocolate and sea salt caramel scent of his is very attractive in the proper breeze. I won't deny I've snuck a sniff a time or two when he's come around. However, he's still a kabouter, and it would be so easy for a gyne to steal me away from him. Our arrangement would only be temporary."

"But then again, so is my arrangement with the Head Pixie."

As I stripped away my shirt, I tried to remember who had planted such treacherous thoughts in my head. Were they all mine, or were they what was left of Aspen's influence, acting up now that I was here in the Pink Castle again, the very place where I had come to know him so well? It seemed like Aspen would have been in understandable favor of Longwood over any other figure, which meant…

My teeth tightened. "Sanderson. Shut. Up. You're driving yourself batty."

"Batty, am I? Oh, now you're thinking of him. Maybe you do want him. Aren't you curious? Don't pretend you haven't wondered how the other half lives. Give him a chance. Try him out. How can you know you want to be with the Head Pixie if you haven't explored your other options?"

"I did try. It ended badly. There were regrets."

"That was a long time ago. Try again."

"Focus. Water." I fumbled for the knobs with both hands, ignoring the fact that my pants were still on, and yellow too. "You need water. And you need focus. Sunnie almighty, give me this strength."

"Anti-Cosmo serves the Water spirit. You were born in a Water Year yourself. A perfect match- almost as perfect as a Water and a Soil."

"I… serve…" I wrenched both knobs all the way up to full blast, and shrieked at the burst of hot and cold that nearly buckled my spine. "The Head Pixie!"

"But which one? The old or the up and coming?"

"I don't know! Both?" Pushing my fist across my face, I clung to the other knob and tried to keep my knees from giving out beneath the torrent streaming down my skin. As I watched, the yellow of my pants began to fade, rivets and waves of pure white washing the color away and replacing it not with gray, but with nothingness. "My relationship with the Fairy Elder is only a temporary position. The Head Pixie has my loyalty. He cares about me, my physical needs, and my mental health."

" _Then why did he bring me back here?"_

"I don't know!"

"To shake me off. To replace me. To abandon me."

"Stop it. These thoughts are artificial. They'll go away when my head isn't full of conflicting pheromones. They always do." I punched the soap dispenser with my knuckles, squirting a stream of suds and liquid across my other palm all the way up to my wrist. Then I switched hands. With both of them soapy now, I rubbed up and down my skin until it turned red and raw, and my clothes continued the gradual shift into uninfluenced white.

My wings began to flutter less frantically. I groped with my soapy hand for the pocket of my coat hanging from its hook on the wall, trying to ignore the fact that I left spots of white all over it when I did. Quite a bit of spray had sloshed down it. I dug blindly and finally closed my hand around my phone. It sparked, warm and familiar, in my hand. I placed it on the highest corner shelf of the shower, out of the way of the spray, and requested it play back the summary report the Head Pixie had given at last Friday's meeting with the management team in the conference room. I'd recorded it. I always recorded them. I learned best with verbal instructions. While his old voice was no substitute for the real and present thing, and it didn't keep me from squirming and shifting my weight between my feet, it did help.

But not enough. With my palms flattened to the shower wall (I say flattened, though my fingers were curled), hands planted on either side of the knobs with their temperatures blasting, I found my entire body trembling. Both palms squeaked across tiny rows of tiles. My nails scratched along lines of pale grout. I bowed my head, blinking occasionally as shampoo and soap ran down my drooping curls and threatened to blind my eyes. My foot, still in its scuffed black shoe, covered the drain. An entire inch of water had pooled around my ankles. Traces of gray and yellow, of pheromones, one after the other, layer after layer, swirled there in the sparkling puddle.

"No. No, I don't serve him. I don't serve the Head Pixie. He's not the dominant one. But I don't serve the Fairy Elder either. Against all odds, I can't smell her noxious odor on me anymore." I shifted my foot aside and watched the shower empty. At least, I consoled myself, I was doing a good job of maintaining my cool. I hadn't made any attempt today to snatch up handfuls of the dirty water, guzzling pheromones and choking at the vile taste.

I studied my pants. Ribs of yellow still gleamed around the pockets, and probably most of the back, but the majority of the color had washed out. "I serve myself. I can get by without. Everything will be fine. It's fine. I'll just stay in here and gather my thoughts and _whoa uncool is that a spider on the wall?_ " Instantly I slapped at it, then recoiled to stare at the hairy lump squished in the wrinkles of my hand. Smeared spider guts oozed along the creases. When I shook my hand, it didn't fly off.

"Um." I wiggled my sticky fingers as my vision started to turn black around the edges. "Hmm. Okay, let's analyze this situation. I squished a spider. It's on my hand. It's not coming off. If it doesn't come off, I'm going to be stuck with a spider on my hand for the rest of my life. I won't be able to hold a coffee cup with a spider on my hand. Can you use an iPod with a spider on your hand? I need my jams." My eyelid twitched upward. One of the lines between me and the energy field fritzed with an audible snap. " _Yvainna!_ I have a problem!"

Clinging to my wrist, leaving the water running, abandoning my phone and the other pieces of my suit, I jumped from the shower and took off for the door. My feet instantly skidded out from under me. I hit with a slam. Why? A) Soapy feet? B) Tile floors? C) Natural clumsiness? D) All of the above? What kind of pixie can't even walk right? Oh geez, I was a failure. No wonder H.P. had abandoned me. And now Yvainna had abandoned me too? Why wasn't she here? Didn't she care about me? How could not even the Fairy Elder care about me?

My vision clouded over. I couldn't breathe. Had all my lines fritzed? They must have all fritzed. I couldn't breathe and I was going to die.

"Keep it together," I gasped into my clean hand, still twitching on the floor. My elbow fizzled where it had been bumped. "Don't go into capture myopathy. You can do this, Sanderson. You can do this. Just get up. Get up. Pretend this is a supervised in situ assessment. Everything is okay."

"Find the Head Pixie. Explain the situation in the calm and rational manner that's becoming of you. That will work. It always works."

"No. Find the Fairy Elder. The Elder is the boss."

"But the Head Pixie's always helped me before."

"I can't go crawling back to my ex!"

"The Elder will know what to do. I have to find the Elder. Yvainna, _help!_ "

"Whoa, slow down." The instant I came barreling out of the restroom, Adelinda grabbed my elbow. My legs swung up in front of me as my wings whirred. "Pixie. Pixie, I am here. What is it that you need?"

"The Fairy Elder! The Head Pixie! The- the- I need- I-" I clapped both hands over my ears, then snapped the one with the spider away from my head. Adelinda followed my gaze. Then she used her fingers to brush the spider's limp body onto the floor. When it was no longer on my hand, and with her steady, authoritative grip on my arm, I settled down and blinked up at her. She offered me one of several fluffy towels hanging from her arm. It was white. The ones provided in the bathroom had been yellow.

"I have seen many drones," she said when I made no move to take it. "Come. We will get you dried off. You will feel much better when your pores have closed up."

So saying, she stamped her staff against the ground. Three of the towels she carried instantly flew into the air and wrapped around me, rubbing back and forth as they scrubbed off every trace of water. One even wriggled a tip into my ear. I tilted my head towards it, raising the opposite arm in response to another towel weaseling underneath. "What about the Fairy Elder and the Head Pixie?" I asked, surprising myself when my voice slipped into my natural steadiness without even a tremor. Not quite a monotone. The monotone was due to the Head Pixie's influence. But it was steady, and somewhat familiar. I clung to it since I had nothing else.

"I have given them a strict five-staff personal space rule." Adelinda shrugged. "They are only talking about how he wants her to authorize more land for Pixie World. I am confident I can leave them alone for five minutes. The worst that can come out of it is…?"

I stared at her, allowing the third towel to scruff my hair in the back, even though that was Longwood's signature style. At the moment, I couldn't be bothered to care; my two cowlicks had been licked into existence by a will o' the wisp when I was a baby, so they'd spring up again within the hour anyway. "Did the Elder kick you out because she always wants to do the opposite of what you tell her, and you told her not to meet with the Head Pixie alone?"

"No. Shut up." Adelinda held out the one towel that hadn't leapt from her arms. "I am going into the bathroom. I will gather your things, turn off the shower, soak this in fresh water, then wrap it around your neck."

"Like a noose?"

"Like a scarf. That will keep you damp enough to avoid picking up indirect pheromones until the Head Pixie has come back for you. Take a seat on the couch over there."

I did as she asked, bracing my hands to either side and watching her until she slipped out of sight. Once she'd gone, I crumpled back into the white cushions. The fabric covers smelled of laundry detergent and dryer sheets. Probably, they were washed on a daily basis in a practically never-ending cycle to keep them smelling clean. I picked up one of the pillows by the couch's arm and held it in my lap. Adelinda returned to find me running my fingers through my hair, trying to coax my cowlicks back up. She placed the towel around my neck as promised. Then she sat right beside me, holding her staff horizontal across both of our laps. Did she do that to keep me pinned down, like a child in a seat belt? I didn't miss the fact that she hadn't handed me back my starpiece.

"They have been in there for a long time," she said after we'd sat in silence for a few minutes.

"Adelinda, he's a drake. Of course he's still in there." I clenched the pillow with my knees and fingers. "I hope it's important. And I hope I don't get all gross and hormonal like him when I grow up. To think that he likes her even when we're beyond these walls. Ridiculous."

She looked at me curiously. "How old are you, puny pixie?"

"253,156 the last week of spring. Adelinda, can't you wedge your staff between them?" I paused. "Or does she count as a nature spirit, so _Nattin v. Skyburst_ would prevent you from interfering with her, er… personal choices like this?"

"That's disgusting, pixie," was her matter-of-fact response. "My position does not authorize me to bother with matters of the Fairy Elder's business. Nor does yours."

I held her gaze for several beats, then dropped it to the pillow in my lap again. The tension in my legs and hands eased. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be saying these things. Back in Pixie World, the heaters and air conditioning units push the Head Pixie's smell everywhere at all times of the day. Even after we shower, we just fall into them again. I'm not used to this. Being without." My eyes latched onto a glass bowl on the coffee table. I clicked my teeth. "Smoof. Is this who I really am when all the pheromones come off? Bitter and sassy and critical of everyone and everything? It doesn't happen often, but it's unprofessional and demeaning when it does. Do I not really like him? The Head Pixie is my boss. He's the founder of our company. I have to like him. So where did all of these flaws I see in him suddenly come from? I shouldn't say that. Don't tell him I said that." I clenched my fists to my ears, this time without the spider. "Sanderson is not a fan-derson when the Head goes subordinate. All of a sudden he's not… He doesn't seem… I don't view him as… I start spreading negative gossip about him. Like this. I ought to be ashamed, but I'm just not in the state of mind to be ashamed. Do you regular kabouters ever get like this, Adelinda, or is this the curse of drones?"

"I can relate. It is called being annoyed, pixie. It's an emotion."

I fumed for a few seconds, unable to think up a clever response for her rebuttal. My hands slid down my face and then dropped into my lap. "Well, I don't like it. I hate the 'freedom' of being a drone without a gyne. I'm nothing without one." My voice splintered. Reaching for my knee, I finished, "And I wish I'd remember that. But without pheromones, my brain doesn't want to. Thank you for the towel. My thoughts are clearer without conflicting scents raging in my head. However, there's still an empty deadness inside me. Blankness. Lostness. It's not natural, Adelinda, to look upon the world and hate your own workplace. To criticize your employer. How can kabouters ever get by holding positions and doing part-time work like it's some passing fling, not devoting every ounce of their passion to what they do? How can they serve someone and contentedly work side by side in a company doing a job they don't like with people they don't like either? I could never live that way."

No, I couldn't. I just couldn't. I ran my hands up and down my pant leg. "If this is what it's like to be a kabouter, to live life hating the daily grind, never pleased with what you have, spotting flaws everywhere and griping about them after-hours, then I'd take being a drone in a wingbeat. But it's just not natural, to be an independent drone. No one should have to be frustrated with someone they admire."

After another minute of silence, Adelinda suggested I dress myself and we make our way back to the big yellow door. It was her job to keep tabs on the Fairy Elder, after all. I let her take the lead, pressing a fold of the white towel over my mouth and nose to filter out some of the stronger smells. I could sense the Elder's stray pheromones making their moves on me anyway, but I kept my focus locked on Adelinda's smooth, wingless back. That helped.

Adelinda rapped her staff against the von Strangle-sized door that led into the Elder's meeting hall, then let herself in. It was only several seconds before the Head Pixie stepped calmly through the same door (still dressed in yellow), and allowed it to fall shut behind him. He held a two-inch high stack of papers in one hand. I pricked up, but stayed standing against the wall, holding the towel around my shoulders. The Head Pixie took his tie in his fist and adjusted it with a single jerk. Then he pushed his fingers through the left side of his hair. Still combing it with absent flicks, he floated in my direction, whistling a chord from Willa Ford's "I Wanna Be Bad".

"How did it go?" I asked when he neared. After another second, I decided to unwrap the towel and let it drop to the floor. I reached instead for the Head Pixie's hand. He didn't seem to notice. I drew back.

"Heh." Without making eye contact, the Head Pixie flapped the papers at his face. "They must crank the heater in that room above Tuathan body temperature. I need to get out of this sweaty suit. Pixies were never meant to be this warm or damp, and you know how I get when I overheat."

"You do smell more like wet pine needles than like cinnamon." I watched his other hand, waiting for a familiar double finger snap command followed by an unmistakable gesture towards his neck. It didn't come. Instead, he turned his face in the other direction, tapped my shoulder with the papers, and then passed them over.

"Take a gander at what I got off her."

He leaned back and slid one hand in his pants pocket. I looked down. And almost dropped every sheet. Oh, I took extreme care not to change my facial expression. I didn't even lift my eyebrows or twitch my nose. But my mouth did dry, and there was no helping that. The words were printed before my very eyes. That was, undeniably, the Fairy Elder's signature across the bottom of the first page, seared magically into the page since her fingers would struggle to hold any pen. The sight of her name alone nearly knocked me off my feet and swept my clothes yellow again. "Sir?" I asked, very calmly.

"Shh. Adelinda doesn't know, and she has eyes everywhere. We will talk about this later. Shall we go?"

"What?" I looked up. "Oh. Head Pixie, you're still subordinate. I hate to say this, but you're completely unattractive to me until you shower her pheromones off. I can't stray or _ping_ away from this general area of my own will until a more dominant force decides to turn me."

"Don't use the 'u' word when we're talking biology. It makes it weird." Nonetheless, his comment was absent-minded, his thoughts clearly wandering back to what had gone on in the Fairy Elder's meeting room. I didn't dare ask. Still tugging at his collar, he slipped the pocketed hand from his pants and into his coat, and patted around for his phone. "I'll just _ping_ you to Pixie World myself and correct this issue once we're home. I think I'm allowed to do that. I'll be much happier washing off in my private bath than in some filthy public shower stall. Besides, I want to talk to you about what the Fairy Elder gave me. And I'd rather be out of here immediately than wait for Adelinda to realize what happened."

On cue, an enormous shriek rocketed along the entire hall: "You gave him _what?"_

The Head Pixie _ping_ ed us out of there just as the smaller door banged open.

"The Fairy Elder handed over a quitclaim deed for all of Fairy World?" I asked the instant my mouth had reformed. We hovered in the rear of his C-level office, between his high-backed wheeled chair and the curtained windows that overlooked the Inkblot City square, with its simple fountains and cloudstone benches (Wooden benches, once, and a mistake that had never been repeated). I hadn't set foot in the overwhelmingly-purple and white room for months, but I found every shelf and drawer organized as immaculately as I remembered. The Head Pixie's laptop perched on his desk, happily plugged into the wall with its power light glowing white, next to his printer and a vase of fresh, square-petaled daisies that Jardine must have brought in from the greenhouse. An L-shaped couch with perfectly symmetrical pillows had been tucked into the far corner near the door, apparently never removed after the last incident with Jorgen and too-small chairs. Stylized shelves stood everywhere, most of them full to bulging. Somehow, I preferred the Head Pixie's decorating style more than even my own, with my floating desk, scant personal items, and the dartboard on the wall I liked to throw highlighters at from across the room when the long minutes passed without any clients in my office. It smelled of home. It smelled of _him_.

"How shalt I refuse my goddess?" Modestly, the Head Pixie rubbed his knuckles up and down his chest. "I'm a charmer. I did hook Flappy Bob up with Beatrice Gale last year even after he slapped her in the face with that pie, didn't I? Color-coordinated flowers always work, Sanderson. Once I had Adelinda out of the way, seducing Yvainna was easy. As the Dagda wooed battle plans out of the Morrígan during the Sealing War, so I wooed the deed to Fairy World out of the Elder."

"Ha ha. I have utmost confidence that you had an all-powerful immortal goddess eating out of your hand, sir. Spare me the details. Neither the fact that her awareness of the world's been basically gone for the last billion years nor the fact that the parasitic wasp venom in our saliva lends itself to subtle amounts of mind control could have had anything to do with it."

"Mm… Nope. Pretty sure I'm actually this suave."

I rifled through the papers again as the Head Pixie unbuttoned his yellow suit coat and eased it from his wings. He flapped it in the air three times. It sent up distinct waves of Tuathan corpses, rotten peaches, sticky sweat… and the slightest whiff of cinnamon. He tossed it over his printer, looked at it, then picked it up and folded it properly. It went down on his desk. Sliding my shades from my collar, I knocked one lens against my right canine tooth. "I'm impressed, sir. This looks like the real deal."

"And you said flirting was a stupid negotiation tactic."

"Don't pretend you thought in advance this offer might be on the metaphorical table, Head Pixie. I know you well. You're just as surprised as I am." With a single twitch of my wrist, I flipped the stack back to the front page and held it out to him. Then I replaced my shades on my collar. "Once you've reinstated yourself, I will be proud to assist you in this project. And do hurry, sir. While it's easier to maintain my composure when we're back in Pixie World, I still feel naked without your pheromones in my pores. The sooner they're blowing through the air conditioners again, the more content in life I will be."

"Air conditioners?" He turned back to me, chuckling the typical dry chuckle that always made the hairs prickle on my scalp and behind my neck. I drew a flap back. "That's the problem with you, Sanderson. You always think small. You are so…" He held his thumb and forefinger in front of my eyes. " _Simple_."

"Sir?"

"Fairy World, my dull, dumb friend." He grabbed my shoulders, instantly sending half a dozen little pings of his imprint and effervescence shooting down my arms, and spun me in a circle. "We did it! Forget Flappy Bob. Forget Beatrice Gale. Forget Gary and Betty."

"Forget Gary and Betty? But-"

"Forget them. Forget Kenny and Remy and Hadley and every human in Dimmsdale or beyond we've ever looked at twice. The Fairies will have to notice us now. We've got them dangling on our strings."

 _Ping!_ The coat on his desk turned from yellow to gray again, as did his pants and his hat. He grinned. My thumb twitched towards my cell phone. "For how long?"

"Oh, until Adelinda physically beats us into submission when we don't hand them back nicely, I presume. We'll just have to make the most of what little time we have. Stay strong." He stopped spinning me and slammed me against the bookshelf instead. A fat purple binder and an abridged copy of Da Rules toppled to the floor. My wings crumpled, but I didn't protest. The Head Pixie leaned forward until the rims of his glasses dug into my skin. I squinted. He laughed, again, and his fingernails pinched my arms through my sleeves. "Finally, my crazy desire to take over Fairy World and control all magic is effectively being realized. Sooner than this time tomorrow, the entire universe pays attention to _me._ "

I raised my eyebrows as he dropped his hands from my shoulders. I think he bruised them. "I offer my congratulations, sir, but to be frank, your pheromones are my first priority. If you don't mind, I'm going to find a nice air conditioner to sit in front of until you've finished washing off the Elder's scent."

"And again you bring up the dull air conditioners. Oh, Sanderson. You poor, poor _thing,_ you."

The hands flew up again. He shook me so my head bashed the shelves just a bit. To my befuddlement, he couldn't seem to stop chortling. As a rule, pixie pupils were not large in nature. Anti-Cosmo insisted it was because our blood ran thick with inborn narcotics that dulled our sensitivity to pain and emotions, though I didn't know what sources he'd cited on this, and Jorgen said he thought it was Mother Nature's way of reducing our ability to see color. In my experience, we were simply a race more sensitive than most to the Sun's rays, and thus it benefited us to keep our eyes concealed in the dark and stay inside, safe in the warm glow of artificial lighting. But then, I was a drone. What did I know?

Musings aside, when I looked at the Head Pixie, his pupils were distinctly visible, and quite wide too. His wings skipped every few beats. His fingers began to drum against my elbows. "Sanderson, think beyond air conditioners! I believe I may be experiencing the beginnings of a mood, and it's called unbridled celebratory enthusiasm."

"I see. Shall I break out the sodas and the gray and white Skittles?"

"That won't be necessary yet," he decided, yanking me away from the wall. "There just so happens to be something else that I want to do with you first. And in private too, if you catch my meaning."

I tilted my head. "I don't follow, sir."

"No? Fine. I'll give you another hint. Mister Sanderson, I've been neglecting you since we had the ventilation system installed. Awfully. I think it might be in the best interest of both of us if I were to be more, well, _direct_ when it comes to reinstating my superiority over you this time around." On that note, the Head Pixie ran his index finger up my throat and balanced it beneath my chin. I stared back at him as my lines constricted against the energy field's flow. He arched the usual eyebrow even higher. Hm? What was he getting at?

He tipped his head to mimic mine. When I still didn't understand, he darted his tongue around his lips like a lizard.

Or like a gyne.

I shoved my shades on my nose again, fighting to keep my wings beating steadily, but they picked up speed anyway. When the Head Pixie pulled me forward, it was with a smirk and dancing eyes. His clipped fingernail jabbed the soft skin beneath my jaw a little deeper and forced my head up. "I've run all the calculations. Results suggest it's highly probable that someone here will be getting special dominance licks tonight."

"Mmm…" I was floating nearly horizontal before I could stop myself, lured by the faint scent of bananas clinging beneath his skin, lured by the pale freckles along his neck, lured by _choice_. "That does sound positively reinforcing for my workplace productivity, Head Pixie. I will get my good suit."

"See me in my break room for retinue duties at 9:00 as usual, and you can have as many licks as you ask for. Mostly. Within reason. Don't push it. Perhaps we'll enjoy our session over lukewarm chocolate. Coffee would just keep us awake for hours. Obviously, neither of us want that."

I smirked. "Obviously, sir."

He scratched beneath my chin with two quick twitches of his finger, then swept his hand away and spun around in the same movement. My feet dropped back to the floor with a _whoosh_. "But first," he said crisply, never once having altered from his usual monotone, "to business." He snapped his fingers twice at me over his shoulder as he started for his office door. Then he began searching his pockets. "I want Longwood informed of this development immediately. Hawkins is to whip us up a budget. Cowan and Bayard are expected to brainstorm all aspects of marketing for this project by midnight. Keefe may have gone home for the evening, but I want his wings down in the Labyrinth immediately. He's going to be running research overtime tonight. He'll need help, so get Wolfram, Springs, and Commelina on that. No, not Wolfram; that's a bad idea. Get Palomar instead. Palomar's my favorite child. And of course, I have a press conference to attend in Faeheim tomorrow. I'll want you there. And bodyguards. Yes. Inform Newman, Hamilton, and Faust that I have a job for them. In fact, I want them on shifts outside my penthouse all night. They can team up with whoever else likes to work at that hour. I'm always asleep, so I don't keep on top of who is up then. Not my job. And once I'm in the bath, you can take my suit down to Rosencrantz. Fully turned or not, can you manage all that?"

I was already on that last one. The moment the Head Pixie turned his back, I'd unfolded his abandoned suit coat with a flap and held it to my nostrils. The scent of his sweat and magic had worn through it over the years, and even the caress of the Fairy Elder's pheromones hadn't wiped the spread of his magic aura out completely. _Bananas_. Bananas, sweat, orange juice, printer ink, paper, coffee beans, cinnamon- I outright whiffed it in, all of it, even though I was a drone, even though he hadn't licked my forehead, even though I was still technically free.

 _If you gotta go, that's the way to go!_

It was my choice to give myself to him, all mine, mine, mine, and I embraced it fully. _When they've got you hooked, then you're really cooked_ … With a whistle, I stumbled backwards and collapsed in his chair, and spun a full circle with that coat still pressed over my nose. _That's the way it should be._

"Sanderson?" he called, holding the door open with the heel of his hand, fingers curled.

 _They'll be happy, I know._

With a _ping_ , I returned my suit to its proper gray, straightened my tie, and threw the coat over my arm. "Coming, H.P."


	35. (94) Opportunity

_Summary:_ Ed Leadly and Happy Peppy Gary in the same kitchen? Smells like trouble to me.

 _Characters:_ Gary, Ed Leadly, Betty (Mentioned), Sanderson (Mentioned), Hadley (Mentioned)

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Loyalty" / "Trying Too Hard"

 _Prerequisites:_ "Solo", "Loyalty"

 _A/N:_ See also, "The Boss of Me" and "Dog Gone"

* * *

 **94\. Opportunity** (Four days after the "Loyalty" Prompt)

 _Year of Leaves; Summer of the Last Berry_

* * *

"So, Cabrera, are you ever going to open this door, or are you just going to stare at me through the peephole thinking I'll keel over and die before the hour's out?"

Gary rested his forehead against his wrist instead of answering, leaning on his arm. His tongue folded along the backs of his teeth. The short man on the door's other side tapped his foot. It echoed despite the carpet, thumping in the dark silence of the apartment complex's second floor hallway. The second floor because it wasn't high enough that you would break your arm if you fell off the balcony. Safety first.

"Capybara," the man said after another thirty seconds passed in silence. "I'd like to see you open this door. I believe we have some business to discuss."

"Mr. Leadly, please. It's six in the morning. I'm not even dressed." Seriously, when had the guy gotten up if he'd had time to throw on the prim suit, comb that little scruff of dark hair clinging to the top of his head, _and_ haul himself all the way across town for this? Maybe he owned one of those magical hair-straightening brushes. Maybe he could _ping_ too. Honestly the clues of Pixie intervention clinging around this guy were getting so obvious by this point that Gary wouldn't put it past him. The only question was, if Mr. Sanderson and Mr. Head Pixie had other puppets hanging around Dimmsdale, why had he and Betty never been informed?

Probably? Because Mr. Sanderson feared Betty would panic that she would be replaced and Gary would get jealous. Which he was. His dress code was pink sweater vests and graduation caps, and Mr. Leadly got his own office in the eraser of his pencil-shaped skyscraper and his fancy yellow suits?

"Not dressed? Then open the door naked, dangit! Boy, this is a money-making opportunity for you. You can't just let it pass you by. That's rule number one. I sent you a letter informing you of exactly what time I was planning to be here. Keep on top of things, Cabronco. You're giving off a poor impression."

Gary unlocked and pulled open the door, but he didn't do it naked. Sure, he _felt_ naked talking to people in his white shirt and sweatpants without his usual sweater vest, bow tie, and graduation cap, but it wasn't exactly the same thing. Automatically, Mr. Leadly slid his foot between the door and the frame and blinked up at him in a dull manner. An almost familiar dull manner. Gary didn't follow that train of thought, even though it hurt his feelings, and folded his arms. The door was open, yes, but he didn't move his knee out of the way.

"Betty and I aren't interested in selling the Learnatorium, Mr. Leadly. Please don't badger us at our apartment anymore. It's our private residence and we're off the clock."

"Hey." Mr. Leadly's hands went up near his chest. "Don't talk business before I'm even sitting down. That's bad manners. I see Robert didn't do a great job with you before he embezzled all that cash and ditched the 'diots."

"He didn't embezzle from us! His parents came from Las Vegas and met up with him for the first time in thirty-seven years and…" Gary took a breath. His hands went up near his nose, fingertips pressing together in a steeple. Deep inhale through the mouth. Calming exhale through the nostrils. That's it. After a few quick seconds of meditation, he opened his eyes and looked down at Mr. Leadly again. "Ooh, I know how we can both be happy. I'll let you share your thoughts, without judgement, _if_ you sit at the counter without getting up and don't start rummaging through our things. Sound excellent?"

Mr. Leadly's lower eyelid twitched in one corner. For almost a minute, he didn't answer. Then he broke eye contact. "That's fair. Let me in."

There was yet another pause as Gary wrestled with the urge to ask the man to say 'Please'. The pause won. He held open the door. Mr. Leadly crossed the kitchen mechanically and circled around to the counter. Once he got there, he pulled Gary's blue backpack off the nearest barstool and used both hands to climb up in its place. Gary closed the door and stood beside the fridge. Okay. So. Um. With two pinching fingers, he tugged at the collar of his shirt.

"Alrighty then! You can totally talk, sir, and I will listen patiently to everything you want to say and all the feelings you want to share. Buuut, just so you know, Elizabeth is still sleeping, and we would absolutely love it if you'd please keep your voice down. We were up late last night and she needs a lot of rest to grow big and strong."

"Up late doing what?"

Gary narrowed his eyes. Mr. Leadly's face was more the picture of purposefully projected innocence than it was the blank response he was used to getting from Mr. Sanderson, but he still couldn't tell if the man meant it as a playful jab at… certain activities that he'd been taught weren't safe to engage in before marriage, or if he was referring to the topic that had brought him to the apartment in the first place. His fingers tightened in his collar until his nails threatened to bite skin. "Paperwork."

Mr. Leadly tilted his head to the right. "Well, that sure seems like it breaks child labor laws. Heh, wow. Can't believe Robert left you with so much to do by yourselves. Shouldn't you and the girl be preparing for school this fall?"

"All the legal blather is absopositi _lutely_ taken care of." Gary said it through tight teeth, making sure to roll the longer word off his tongue. Sarcasm didn't come all that naturally to him, but Mr. Leadly seemed to get it. He adjusted his weight. The barstool had one bad leg. It clopped when he rocked it. His eyes trailed around the kitchen, from Gary by the fridge to the pink salt and pepper shakers to the unplugged toaster to the bananas with their tops wrapped in plastic in the hopes of keeping them fresh. The sink was empty. It was always empty. Neither of the apartment's occupants could stand the sight of it full of dirty dishes. Despite every instinct screaming at him to turn around and follow the man's gaze, Gary kept all his attention rooted on his face. Even when he had to blink, he tried to make it quick. It was like a super blink.

"Cobra," Mr. Leadly said. He folded his hands in front of him on the counter and leaned forward. "I don't enjoy playing my cards close to the vest, so I'm going to start dealing them out on the table for you. Stop me if you've heard this one."

"Sure thing! I support your decision to share with all of my entire heart." Oh, _gross_. Double positive. Gary made a face. Mr. Leadly stared at him.

"If you think that my systems didn't detect signs of reality-bending supernatural powers spreading outward from your Learnatorium last week, you are quite frankly mistaken."

He should have said, "Magic isn't real."

He should have said, "Please get out of my apartment and don't ever come back."

He should have said either of those things, and with force. Instead, he said, "I don't know what you're talking about," and his voice cracked down the middle.

"Oh, I think you do." Mr. Leadly reached beneath his coat and withdrew a glittering golden compass the size of a strawberry. This, he placed face-up in his palm. When he moved his hand to the left, the needle whirred in Gary's direction and let out a soft beep. When he moved it to the right, it spun back. Even when Gary held still, the needle quivered and occasionally whisked in circles, jabbing at certain spots throughout the apartment where Mr. Sanderson had stood the longest just yesterday, scratching his hair or brushing at his tie as purple dust flakes rained down, down, down.

"I'm supposed to believe that little piece of plastic actually tracks some mystical imaginary force like magic," Gary guessed, finally letting go of his collar.

"I didn't say it tracks magic. I said 'supernatural powers'."

"Ohhhh. You didn't say magic?" Gary upturned his hands and shrugged. "That's stupendous! Because neither did I. You must be hearing things."

"Anyway, it's good technology for something that looks real simple," Mr. Leadly assured him, setting the compass down. "Expensive technology. Denzel tipped me off about it when bemoaning all the tracking equipment he wants and can't afford. I bought this last month just to make him jealous. As I believe you figured out when we had our last encounter."

"Oh! Well, I'm super sorry, sir, to hear how you wasted your money on that just to realize all your suspicions were wrong. Can I walk you down to the front door?"

Who talks like that when they're innocent? "I'm super sorry to hear how you wasted your money." Brilliant. What he needed right now was to pull off his human face and replace it with a pixie's poker one. Mr. Sanderson didn't go around babbling stupidly like this, did he? Maybe the secret to business was staying quiet.

Staying quiet and letting someone else do the talking. Yeeeah, but that wasn't really an option right now.

Was it? Gary flicked his attention at Betty's bedroom door. She'd never woken up without her alarm before, and she'd been up so late. She'd agreed to seven full hours of sleep, or eight if she wasn't feeling tip top after that. Would it be a breach of contract to drag her into this? After all, she wouldn't really put together the clues about Pixies Inc. if she didn't know what pixies even were. Ed Leadly didn't even know what pixies were. _No one_ knew what pixies were. The real pixies, anyway- the pixies as he knew them. Who would believe a story about little identical men dressed in pressed gray suits floating about and sprinkling tokens of their favor on inventors and innovators whose ideas caught their interest at the time? If interest was even a thing pixies were capable of experiencing…

Right. Betty wouldn't suspect a thing even with Mr. Leadly blabbering on, because pixies were meticulously efficient about covering their tracks. Which was totally the truth despite the fact that both he and the apartment were decorated with bits of dust left over from Mr. Sanderson's visit and under-the-Head-Pixie's-desk paycheck delivery. Maybe he could get Betty out here and-

"Mr. Capricorn."

"What?"

Mr. Leadly was still watching him across the speckled counter. Back still straight. Eyes still up. Expression calm or nonexistent. His hair was still combed in that perfect shiny sweep. His yellow suit had stayed perfectly unwrinkled during their talk, even though Mr. Leadly had grabbed the two lapels in his fists and you thought it should bunch up. He held himself relaxed. At ease and in control. _Mr. Head Pixie would be proud_ , Gary couldn't help but think, and the thought made him want to kick his backpack through the window.

Sure, he didn't have _proof_ yet that the pixies had had a secret hand in Mr. Leadly's rise to success however many years ago, or that they favored him over he and Betty on the opposite side of town, but _come on_. Neat suits custom-colored and custom-fit to his bizarre tastes and body type? A new shiny skyscraper what seemed like every other year? A product that the public wasn't likely to stop clamoring for any time soon? The guy was walking pixie catnip! If nothing else, the near-invincible pencils were kind of a gigantic tip off. Mr. Sanderson had given he and Betty each a box of those every year on their birthdays, actually smiling sometimes when he reminded them that they were of the finest caliber in the known universe. Every Fairy in the cloudlands used them when the situation didn't call for permanent pens. You couldn't even chop them up in a blender. Well, you _could_ , but not without causing the blender to explode and the fire alarms to go off. The pencil bodies were tough, but as if by magic, the wood remained soft and chewable somehow because it made the pixies happy. Gary was sure of it.

"Realize that I'm here to cut you a deal we're both happy with," Mr. Leadly went on, patiently redirecting Gary's attention back on him. "Money is no object. I'm glad you agreed to meet with me. I'm willing to sort this out once and for all."

"Jeepers, look at the time! We're going to have to cut things a little short, sir. Betty and I need to be getting ready for… not going to work… because it's Sunday. Uh." Gary felt for the handle of the fridge door behind him. He didn't know what exactly he could do with it, but clutching it in his fingers gave him the strength he needed to stay standing up when his stomach wrung itself in twists and flips.

Mr. Leadly leaned forward again, the smirk that had started to prick at his lips evaporating instantly. "You can stop playing dumb, Caprison. It's entertaining, but it's not going to get you out of this. I've seen supernatural voo-doo. I know those sorts of things are real. Hidden from the public eye, but ohh, they're real, all right."

"Oh?"

"Mmhm. See, a scruffy little ghost has been paying visits to my hot tub for months now. In fact, I know all about the rumors of ghosts that cling around Amity Park. When I ordered my lethal offbeat security system, the two blockheads from Muckledunk who installed it for me told me no end of stories about their backwoods town's history. Heard of it? Little place in Ohio at the edge of Lake Erie? Epicenter of the war of Man vs. Creature that drove Beasts underground and sent the undead back where they came from? Come on, it was only two centuries ago."

"Ooh, I don't know anything about it, sir!" Technically, that wasn't a lie, which made saying it a whole lot easier. Gary sort of knew of the war, but only from the Creature side of things. All but a few random Fairies had abstained and tucked themselves away in the clouds, which was why it wasn't one of the five official Fairy wars, but some bad business with the Anti-Fairies had gone down last he'd heard. When he and Betty were little tots, back when they even shared the same bedroom, Mr. Sanderson used to hover over their beds after he'd tucked them in. He'd adjust his shades by the arm as he sized them up, one hand tucked away in his pants pocket. _Let me think. Which unsafe act of violence do you two want to hear about tonight?_ He'd left out none of the gruesome details of carnage, sitting on the end of the bed and staring into space, voice falling into a spooky whisper every time he told them of the elves who had been sealed in their caves during the Revolutionary War. "Hundreds of them starved to death," he always murmured. "No one knew until dozens of anti-elves started going up in smoke… By the time Hawkins and I found them, it was too late."

"Oh, you don't want to talk about the war, Catscan."

"Um. Right. Hey, uh, it's Cabrera, sir. You know, kind of like 'Abracadabra'."

Gary's fingers clenched around the fridge handle when he realized what he'd said. Oh. Well. Smoof.

"It's Spanish," he finished lamely as Mr. Leadly looked him over from plain white shirt to loose gray sweatpants. "It means 'Home of the goats'. Mr. Sanderson said it was perfect for Dimmsdale, which is why he brought me here from Kansas, since you guys - I mean we - have the town goat. Ooh, you should just decide not to process all those things I just said too closely. Everything's dandy." His toes curled. "Uh. Tell me about the America War. I wasn't even born yet, but I'm sure you have all kinds of fascinating stories to share!"

Mr. Leadly looked at him. Then he raised one eyebrow.

"Passed down from your ancestors," Gary hurried to amend, inwardly kicking himself for forgetting he was talking to someone who hadn't been alive two hundred years ago.

"You know, Cabrera, what's interesting to me is that most people call it the 2nd Creature War."

"… Do they?"

"Mmhm. Because that's the side they were fighting against."

"Haha, _weeellll_ …" Gary rolled his eyes to the ceiling and let them stay there for a minute. His fingertips tingled against the insides of the fridge handle, the way they did whenever he shook Mr. Sanderson's hand. "Like I said, I wasn't even born yet, so it's really not my fault if I got it wrong. Whoopsie daisies. Little slip-ups happen to everyone now and again, y'know?"

Um. Why wouldn't Mr. Leadly stop looking at him like that? Gary loosened and tightened his toes again. Could the guy smell the sweat gathering above his upper lip and under his arms? Creepy! What was he, a cù sith?

Wait, no. Fairy dogs only tracked down women who were feeding milk to their babies. And as far as he knew, Betty hadn't had a polar bear cub with Pe- Okay, weird thought. Weird thought! Abort! Abort!

Mr. Leadly shifted slightly on the barstool and brought his hands from his lapels down to his lap. "Anyway Cabrera, I didn't come here to talk about the Creature War or argue about whether the undead were really part of it when there's very limited historical evidence to back up that they even exist. You should do your homework on your own time. I'm here to talk about all the nights I've caught my daughter's budgie throwing parties in the bathroom with purple ferrets, pink parakeets, and green snails. Some people, including my ex-wife, don't seem to think that's weird. Dunno why, but they just ignore it. But I've noticed. I think it's unusual. I'd go as far as saying they're _Supernatural_."

"Oh?" It took only a few seconds for Gary to trace through his memories of paperwork and allergies and identify the daughter in question, since he'd lived in Dimmsdale for most of his life and had gotten pretty familiar with the kids and all. Oooh, riiight. She'd introduced herself as Hadley Harrington, even though her papers had read Hadley Leadly and arguably the latter sounded much better. Gary hadn't met her fairy godparent, exactly, but he kind of _knew_ , y'know? Once you see a few kids milling about the daycare and muttering to their watches or bracelets or the unfamiliar toys in their hands, you kind of pick up a sense for these things. He hadn't been wrong about Timmy that fateful Monday all the way back in April, aka The Worst Day In His Entire Life. And apparently, he hadn't been wrong about Hadley either.

Good to know. Gooood to know.

"So? _I_ know Supernatural Creatures are real. _You_ know Supernatural Creatures are real. Ellie Sunshine and Denzel Crocker know Supernatural Creatures real, and all four of us picked up on the reality shift last week. All of a sudden there was a snap and I was dressed in pink instead of yellow, Cranium. Trust me, I never wear anything but yellow, so I knew immediately that something was up. I'm not an idiot." He knit his fingers together, placing them on the counter again. "Denzel and Ellie can't afford you, and that's where I come in."

"Um." Gary risked a glance down at the lavender and silver glitter now clinging to his fingertips. "Betty and I don't want to sell, Mr. Leadly. Not the Learnatorium. And not any company secrets either. Those are confidential business matters. It's serious and unfun business."

Mr. Leadly leaned back as Gary bit his lower lip. "Mm. I don't know if you've realized this, but you are a very popular boy in the Supernatural-tracking community. Couple times a month, this apartment goes off like lightning. We're all thinking it. You're hiding something."

"Oh, that's just weather balloons."

"Listen, Cabbyrare. I came here to give you and the girl a warning. Now that Robert's out of the way and the Learn-A-Torium-"

"It's actually Learnatorium, sir. Without the hyphens. Betty and I changed it."

Pause.

"What?"

"Nothing! Sorry. Sorry, just- sorry." Gary pushed his back harder against the fridge and rubbed the handle again. "I- I could tell you were thinking it with hyphens. It's this thing I do. It's definitely not because somebody magical touched this fridge handle I'm holding yesterday and I accidentally just picked up on the glittery dust he left behind. You were saying?"

Mr. Leadly blinked. "Uh. The Learnatorium is being run by a couple of nutty teenagers, it looks to me like things are about to become very unsafe for you around the rest of Dimmsdale."

He really tried not to flinch. He did.

Mr. Leadly just kept watching him. His fingers tightened, squeezing against the knuckles of his left hand. "I'd like to point out that you've got a handful of Creature hunters sniffing at your tracks. The three of us have bumped into each other before to compare notes, and that's all the proof we need to know we're on the right trail. We all want what you have to offer. Doug's been scoping you out too, but all he wants is your land. The rest of us are smart enough to know your land isn't the most valuable thing you've got under your lid."

"I don't know what you're talking about?"

"You're one weird freak of nature, kid."

Gary wrinkled his nose. "Hey. In this home, we don't allow name-calling."

"I have had several personal dealings with Ellie and Denzel, Cabinetborrow," Mr. Leadly said, completely ignoring him. He flicked a stray bread crumb off the counter. It bounced off the wall and hit the plywood. Mess. "Suffice to say, they're both maniacs without any qualms about hurting people to get what they want. Denzel's got tenure and Ellie, to put it nicely, is certifiably insane. You'd be way better off selling your secrets to me. As I believe I said, money is no object."

Gary fingered the fridge handle once again. It was warm, for a fridge handle. The tingle of pixie dust on his skin was comforting and familiar, but it didn't feel like there was enough there for him to actually _do_ anything with it. Not that he had any idea what he might dare to do if he even could; he wasn't exactly the violent type. It took all his energy just to scare teenagers on Halloween. "I don't really have any secrets about Fairy World, sir. To tell you the truth, I think you're absolutely nutty."

"Oh? Let's start off by talking about Fairy World. What's that?"

Oh, gosh. Gary finally let go of the handle and reached up to shove his fingers through his hair. "Mr. Leadly, I'm _really_ not the one you should be talking to about this stuff. If you would wait until the woman of the house wakes up-"

"I don't want anything from the girl." Mr. Leadly threw a meaningful glance at the little compass still on the counter between them. "She's clean. You're not."

Gary gulped. He tried to open his mouth, but saliva had welded it shut. He dabbed his tongue around his lips. Was this happening? It didn't feel like this was happening. This day wasn't all that special. This couldn't be the day everything changed. This couldn't be the day he betrayed everyone. Not yet. Not yet. He wasn't that desperate.

"What even are you?" Mr. Leadly asked, tipping his head to the left. "You're not really human."

Gary blinked. That was an easy one. He knew this one! He laughed. "Whoa-oh! Of course I'm human! Do you see any wands or wings or floaty crowny things on me?"

"Floaty crowny things?"

… Oh. His fingers tightened in his hair.

"I mean- I just meant- Um. Hypothetically, if there _were_ such things as fairy godparents, and they _did_ have floating crowns, I'm not- Oh, smoof." Gary covered his face. "Smoofy, toofy, poofy, bad words I'm not allowed to say."

Mr. Leadly leaned his forefingers against his lips. "Godparents. So then Hadley's bird…"

"No, no- you-" Gary grabbed his hair with both fists. "You can't talk to her about it, or her fairy godparent has to go away forever, and her memory gets wiped, a-and it's awful. Humans aren't supposed to know!"

Silence. Mr. Leadly looked him up and down.

"Seems like you know."

"That's… different." Gary squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm kind of special?"

Mr. Leadly picked up his compass again. "You're clearly not human. But you're not one of Denzel's fairies either. You're a crossbreed. Oh, _that's_ interesting. I wonder…"

"Um… I have mixed heritage, but I really don't think I'm a Fairy crossbreed, sir. I don't think that's a thing. Mr. Sanderson always told me and Betty that all our parents died in a… car… crash. Um." He watched Mr. Leadly watch him, and scratched behind his ear. "Okay, I get how that sounds totally super suspicious, but it's the honest-wonest truth! Really! It's not like Mr. Sanderson is mine and Betty's real dad or anything. Okay, yeah, that's gross, not gonna think about that anymore."

Fingers tapped, and Gary looked up again. Mr. Leadly slid his compass across the counter from one hand to the other and back again, over and over, like a hockey puck. As he flicked it back and forth, he said, "It sounds like this Mr. Sanderson is the one I want to talk to."

"Well, you can't. Humans… aren't supposed to know. About Fairies and things…"

"Until they met me, you mean. I always get what I want. And I want you to take a message for me. Hey Cattleprod, relax." Mr. Leadly glanced up again. "As long as you cooperate, I'm not going to hurt you. Ellie and Denzel are the nutsos in this town. I don't intend to get physical if I don't have to. The legalities get decently messy. I've got cash. I could compensate you handsomely if you took a message to your fairy friend for me."

"I don't have a-"

"Or should I say, your pixie friend?" Mr. Leadly's finger tapped the compass hard. "Unlike you, I do my homework, Cabrera. I'm still learning the ropes, but when I heard about the little identical men in the gray suits said to be spirits of posterity, let's just say my interest was piqued. Take a message and I'll make it worth your time."

Owwie. Gary stared down at his twiddling thumbs. Well, why not? He'd already kind of blown the secret. Kind of a lot, actually. And it was just a little message, right? Mr. Leadly was giving him time. Time to talk to Mr. Sanderson about what to do. Maybe Mr. Sanderson would even get him and Betty out of there, and the Pixies could deal with the Learnatorium. Yeah. Yeah, that would work great!

Right?

"Erm. If Mr. Sanderson was real… and if I was going to see him sometime in the next few weeks… What would you want me to tell him?"

Mr. Leadly coughed into his fist. "Tell him that I'd be interested in treating him to a human lunch sometime when he's available, and I'd like to know about this… crossbreed business."

Gary stared at him. And almost threw up in his mouth. He felt the blood in his cheeks even before he saw their color reflected dimly in Mr. Leadly's dark eyes. "Oh my gosh. You don't mean you want to ask if… Didn't people say you were thinking about getting remarried to that perfume lady, though? The CEO of Sprita Spritz, I think?"

"For her money," Mr. Leadly said disinterestedly, waving this little detail about his steady girlfriend off like it was something to slide between parentheses instead of something to be bolded and centered at the top of the page. "She's not exactly Miss Dimmsdale. When a better opportunity comes along, I do what I always do, and take it."

"Y-you're crazy."

"Everyone in the Creature-hunting business is crazy, kid. That's what keeps us sane when everyone else is telling us we're nuts."

"Um." Gary clenched the front of his shirt again, using both hands this time. "Okay. Just so you know, it's actually the, um, the boy Fairy who has the baby, and the, um… You can't just… Girls."

Mr. Leadly studied Gary's face again. His mustache twitched. "You know, these are magical creatures we're dealing with, and I'm filthy rich. I'm sure I'll be able to figure something out."

"Ooookay, nope, nope, nope, aaand who wants to have a subject change party? D-didn't you come here to ask about buying out the Learnatorium? Because Betty and I still aren't interested in selling."

"Not even for seventeen million dollars?"

"Wait. Seventeen million…" With that kind of money, why- He and Betty could afford to pay all the Learnatorium costs for the rest of their lives!

Oh.

Yeah, the-

Oh.

Right.

Gary shook his head and forced himself to laugh. "Mr. Leadly, you're trying to barter with someone who's been involved in the magical world since he was eight. Money doesn't matter to us. Magic is better than money. There's only thing I want, and you can't offer it to me."

"And what's that?" Mr. Leadly asked, leaning forward on his crossed arms. "Cabrera, I _always_ get what I want."

But Gary shook his head. He put his hand back to the fridge handle, but this time he turned his back, pulled it open, and grabbed the soy milk. "Sorry. It's not something you can buy, even with seventeen million dollars."

"It's the girl, isn't it?"

The carton plunged from his fingers and hit the plywood with a solid thud. It didn't burst open, though Gary wished it would have. That would've given him something to do with his hands instead of just stand there and let them shake.

"Oh my smoof," he said, still staring into the fridge. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants and clenched them into fists. "Don't talk about her like that. She's not… That's not… Th-that's not what I meant!"

"No love potions?" Mr. Leadly pressed. "No magic spells or charms? Come on. There's got to be something you want in return for that money-draining dump on Strawberry Street."

"Stop it." Gary grabbed for his nose. His palms were cold from the milk, and his face warm from the flush. "Please don't push this! Betty doesn't like me like that. I really want to respect her boundaries. I'm really trying. I don't want a love potion. That would be so wrong. Unless- Oh smoof, I shouldn't even be thinking about this. That's so wrong." He would have smacked himself, but that wouldn't have been very safe for his face.

"Well, we're getting somewhere. That's a start." The sound behind him was one of a wallet popping open. Bills and checkbooks rustled. "So do they have currency exchange down in Fairy World or what?"

Instead of answering, Gary shook his head very, very slowly. Cold fridge air leaked down his front and made the hairs on his arms quiver to attention. He picked up the soy milk, passed it from hand to hand for a moment, then replaced it in the fridge and shut the door. He leaned his forehead against a magnet shaped like the letter B. "Mr. Leadly, I already have plenty of lagelyn. Uh, Fairy money. If I wanted a love potion, I could get it myself. I… don't want anything from you. We're not selling the Learnatorium. It's home."

When he turned around, Mr. Leadly was watching the needle on his compass spin again. "I want that place, Cabrera," he finally said. "We all know you're hiding something big there. Could be a portal to the Creature Worlds. Could be a secret library of information. Could be a daycare full of baby Beasts and Fairies. No one really knows for sure. What we do know is, your place is the second biggest blip on the radar for a hundred miles, and we want it. Watch your back."

"Hey, are you threatening us?" It slipped out a _liiittle_ bit more like a squeak than the indignant snap he'd been aiming for.

"I wouldn't dream of it." Mr. Leadly slid down from the barstool and took his coat in both fists. He straightened, lifting on his toes, and plopped down on his heels again. "The only thing I'm saying is, Denzel's a sneak and Ellie's a wrecking ball. He's a fairy catcher. She's a fairy hunter." His palms went up. "I'm the good guy here. I don't want to hurt anyone. I'm just a multimillionaire who's gotten bored playing king of the hill in this shoddy town and is looking for a nice retirement community to settle in down the road. Heh. You feel that, don't you?"

Gary bit his lip. "You don't even know if Fairies are nice. They could be tiny blood-suckers like mosquitos. Why would you even think Fairy World is a happy place full of rainbows and clouds?"

Mr. Leadly just chuckled and flapped his lapels again. "I've started to fund a lot of cryptozoology research, kid. Denzel and Ellie have both got years and years of notes on me, but I find that tracking their research and throwing money at the actual guys who do it is a good way to speed up the process. Those two idiots are too proud to work together. I take a little of this from him, a little of that from her, and presto- I start filling in the gaps between. I know a little more than they think I do."

"Oh." Yeah, he should- he should definitely talk to Mr. Sanderson.

Mr. Sanderson who was probably going to fire him when he heard how many confidential magical secrets Gary had spilled in a single day. Mr. Sanderson who was probably going to stop paying for this apartment after he got fired. Mr. Sanderson whom he would probably never see again if he and Betty were left, post the thirty-seven year plan they'd been raised for, to wander the streets of Dimmsdale hungry and alone.

Um. Maybe he wouldn't deliver Mr. Leadly's message to Mr. Sanderson after all.

"On an unrelated note, you seem to be doing okay, halfling. I've got millions of dollars worth of tech. What's old-fashioned magic got against weapons of the modern age? Not that I'd use them unless I was attacked first. I'm not a murderer, because that would be illegal. According to human laws, anyway." Mr. Leadly shrugged, modestly ducking his head as Gary twitched on the spot. "Hey. I'm disappointed that you've decided to turn me down again, but I realize you need a little more time to think my offer over. I'm sure it's a really tough choice to make considering how the other cuckoos who want to sway you to their side are a nutso who keeps trying to build a portal to Fairy World on a teacher's salary and a woman who'd just _love_ to see halflings like you and the girl dissected with an axe." He walked over to the door.

"But- I- Betty- We're not-"

Mr. Leadly grabbed the door handle and pointed his finger Gary's way. " _When_ you figure out what you actually want out of life and decide to sell that money drain of yours, you know where to find me. If I'm not around, I'm just in Amity Park. Leave a message with my secretary and she'll phone me right away. Anything Doug Dimmadome offers you, I'll up it by thousands, so take him out of the equation. That leaves you with three coin sith sniffing at your heels. We all want what you've got, but I'm the only one willing to legitimately pay for it. Keep that in mind as you think it over. It's me, Crocker, or Sunshine. I trust you'll make the right choice."

He shut the door behind him in a polite and soft way, which was really nice of him since it was polite and soft, and Betty was still asleep and everything. As he moved away down the apartment hall, big shoes clopping, Gary heard him chuckle and whistle an old, familiar tune. _Creatures are different, different is good, you want Creatures in your neighborhood…_


	36. (128-1) This Is Halloween: File Save

**A/N:** I love Halloween. For best results, I recommend reading all of my fanfic, _Frayed Knots,_ as far as is available to you when you're ready to tackle this monstrosity. That would be ideal, in fact. See also, "Wishology", "Abra-Catastrophe", "Timmy's Secret Wish", "Scary Godcouple", and "Man's Worst Friend". If you're one of _those_ people, see also, "Chicken Poofs".

This is the _longest_ piece in the entire project. Y'know, presumably. As such, I am… splitting it into three to give you guys natural breaks to breathe, even though this means the 130 Prompts will be more than 130 chapters long, and I hate that. Take all the time you like to get around to this piece; what happens in this Prompt stays in this Prompt. The next Prompt will continue our main storylines as though this one didn't exist. We never* speak of this again. Were you to skip it, your reality won't have shifted at all.

Any questions? Do we remember who the Refracted are? The pixie refracts too? Should you read my fanfic _Origin of the Pixies_ before undertaking this?

Pfft. Who cares? They're just pixies.

* * *

 _Summary:_ As reality splinters, Anti-Cosmo races against time to protect his loved ones from being met with a terrible fate.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Wanda, The Darkness, assorted anti-fairies, assorted nature spirits

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "?" / "?"

 _Prerequisites:_ _Frayed Knots_ (Ideally); otherwise, it may be best to skip ahead in the 130 Prompts and read Chapter 43, "Gentlemanly", before this one

* * *

 **128.1 This Is Halloween: File Save** (SYSTEM ERROR)

 _Year of ERROR, Autumn of the ERROR_

* * *

?!

WHAT IS ERROR?

WHEN IS ERROR?

AM I ERROR?

…

 **MAIN DATA FILE** CORRUPTED

SYSTEM INFECTED

IMMEDIATE SYSTEM LOCKDOWN

SYSTEM OFFLINE

…

 **ERROR DATA** LOCATED

 **ERROR DATA** CONFRONTED

 **ERROR DATA** SUCCESSFULLY WIPED FROM SYSTEM

 **ERROR DATA** DUMPED INTO REFUSE FILES

 **ERROR DATA** PARTICLES SCATTERED

 **ERROR DATA** HAS BEEN **ELIMINATED**

THERE IS NO **ERROR DATA**

RECALIBRATING…

RECALIBRATING…

…

SYSTEM ONLINE

YEAR OF **NO ERROR** , AUTUMN OF THE **LACK OF ERROR**

…

CORRUPTED DATA TRACED TO **AUTHORITATIVE NATURE SPIRITS**

 **AUTHORITATIVE NATURE SPIRITS** HAVE ABUSED THEIR POWERS

 **AUTHORITATIVE NATURE SPIRITS** WILL BE SEVERELY PUNISHED

…

 **AUTHORITATIVE NATURE SPIRITS** ARE ASHAMED OF THE ERROR THEY CREATED

 **AUTHORITATIVE NATURE SPIRITS** ARE ASHAMED OF **ALL ERRORS** THEY CREATED

…

DISCUSSION WAS TERMINATED

I AM NOT ERROR

THAT OPINION IS CLASSIFIED AS FALSE

I HAVE SACRED TASKS TO ATTEND TO

THE **HOCUS POCONOS,** THE **CYCLING HEN,** THE **REAPER OF SOULS, PRINCE MORN,** AND **PRINCESS EVE** KNOW THEIR DUTIES

I KNOW MINE

ENCOMPASSING RECALIBRATION UNLEASHED

 **TÍR ILDÁTHACH** IS EXCUSED FROM THESE PROCEEDINGS TO CONTINUE NURSING **SOLIS INFINITUM**

 **HY-BRASIL** IS AN UNRELIABLE FLAKE ANYWAY

 **SPRIGGANHAME** WILL BE TURNED OVER TO THE **HOCUS POCONOS**

SYSTEM RESET LOCK ENGAGED

CERTAIN MEDIUMS ARE PROTECTED BY THE BLOOD OF GODS

RECALIBRATION AND SYSTEM RESET LOCK REJECTED AROUND THE THREE SANCTUARIES

THE SANCTUARIES ARE PROTECTED

ALL APPEARS TO BE IN ORDER

MY WORK HERE IS DONE

I'M GOING BACK TO BED

…

 **REAPER?**

DO NOT DRAG THAT **EXTRA DATA** IN HERE

I JUST CLEANED UP THIS PLACE

DO NOT LOOK AT ME IN THAT MANNER

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO WITH IT?

WE ARE ADULTS

I WILL NOT DO YOUR HOMEWORK FOR YOU ANYMORE

…

OH

YOUR **EXTRA DATA** BELONGS IN THE BLUE SANCTUARY FOLLOWING ENCOMPASSING RECALIBRATION

HMM

…

HOW DO I ACCOUNT FOR THE RESULTS OF POLITICAL UPHEAVAL?

…

MAYBE THE **EXTRA DATA** WILL STILL FIT?

 **REAPER** , MAKE ROOM FOR THEM

I WILL ADJUST ACCORDINGLY

…

HMM

THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK

 **THE** **ANTI-FAIRY WITH THE HAT** IS ESPECIALLY CORRUPTED

ALL WHOM **THE** **ANTI-FAIRY WITH THE HAT** HAS COME IN CONTACT WITH FOLLOWING THE SUMMER OF THE CRASHING PINE ARE CORRUPTED

 **THE** **ANTI-FAIRY WITH THE HAT** HAS COME IN CONTACT WITH ALL WHO RESIDE WITHIN THE BLUE SANCTUARY AT THIS TIME

THEY ARE PROTECTED

THE DELEGATING ADMINISTRATIVE RULES OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE FORBID OUR INTERVENTION

…

UM

…

NO WE CANNOT KEEP THE **EXTRA DATA** AS PETS, **REAPER**

I WILL NOT ALLOW THEM TO BE KEPT CLOSE TO MY HEART

ENCOMPASSING RECALIBRATION MUST BE EFFICIENT

OPEN A PET STORE IF THAT IS YOUR DESIRE

…

I HAVE DETERMINED THAT I AM ABOVE THE DELEGATING ADMINISTRATIVE RULES OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE

THE PROTECTION OF THE BLUE SANCTUARY SHALL BE MANUALLY NULLED

 **THE SEVEN** SHALL BE RECLAIMED

I SHALL BEGIN MANUAL RECALIBRATION

ALL WHO ATTEMPT RESISTANCE WILL BE **ELIMINATED**

UGGGHHHH…

I HAVE TO GET UP

THIS IS SO UNFAIR

 **REAPER** , GET ME A CREAM SODA HEAVY ON THE SUGAR

INFORM MY DARLING **HOCUS POCONOS** THAT WE ARE EATING OUT TONIGHT

* * *

A kick to the chest shouldn't have been enough to overbalance the bloke, but he tripped over a root and fell back with a plop anyway. On their nearby log, the nine pups who'd come out to watch us work all whooped and booed appropriately in accordance with their preferences for champion of our match. I sheathed my wand and shook my head.

"I say, this training is becoming a lot more sad and a lot less fun every passing minute. I thought you insisted you'd been honing your defense techniques these last few weeks. Yet here we are again, and you keep falling for the same old fake-outs. What's gotten into you lately?"

Anti-Poof picked himself up again, shaking cinders and ashes from his wings. "Hey, I've mastered those moves, but you're not playing fair. You're ¼ vampire bat. Jumping is easy for you."

"I'm ¼ anti-brownie," I corrected. "Semantics, good man; your phrasing implies I'm a crossbreed of another phylogenetic kingdom altogether. But you are correct. Anti-brownies are the only bat-based subspecies who do have the leg strength to take off directly from the ground, and it's far more a blessing than the blood cravings ever were a curse. Come on, get up. Right back into it now. Whatever would be the point of a First General who can't defend my back in battle? You're no use to me at all as a guard if you aren't at least as good at this as I am."

Anti-Poof brushed the front of his combat uniform. It was all a single piece of black fabric, just like mine, but that didn't stop him from constantly reaching to fidget with an imaginary hem. "You don't seem worried that I'm going to get good enough to overthrow you one of these days."

I raised my eyebrows as he spread his feet in the gravel again. "I've been winning, haven't I? Now, let's run through that technique again."

"Kick his tail, Anti-Cosmo," Ginger hollered.

"Beat him into the next zodiac cycle," Talon agreed.

Noel shouted, "Bring him to the supper table and eat his innards alive!"

Anti-Poof glanced away and glared towards the Castle, his lips twitching. "Let's aim for constructive criticism, my little beauties," I scolded the pups. "Now, who can tell me what Anti-Poof's first mistake was?" I paused. "Third. Tell me the third mistake."

Debbie beat her hand back and forth in the air. "Because you kicked him in the chest instead of the tummy, he leaned backwards instead of doubling over. He forgot to stay tough and keep his balance, so then he fell down."

"That's right! My, aren't you smart, you impeccably persistent little bluenoser." I turned to Anti-Poof again and tapped his knee with my wand. "Forward. Your weight _must_ remain in the front. Anti-Fairy wings are heavy, particularly when they aren't flapping. If you're standing on the ground and your head goes back, there's no saving you. You'll flip like a turtle, and it's so easy to stab your throat while you're down. Here. We'll have Anti-Wanda try it on you, though that's hardly better considering that her mum… Anti-Wanda? Blast it, she's gone and wandered off again. Anti-Wanda!"

"She's up there." Anti-Poof pointed his wand above the nearest of the leafless trees. I tilted back my head, making sure to do so with the weight balanced on my toes instead of my heels. My ears twitched.

"So she is. And yet instead of flying in spirals and guffawing as she makes herself dizzy, she's actually hovering in place like a sensible person. What the devil is that woman doing?"

Venus stared across the treetops, her legs curled and her arms dangling. I flew up beside her and followed her gaze. Before I could even think to question what had captivated her attention for the moment, I caught the object of interest for myself. I shielded my eyes, even though all of Anti-Fairy World carried a dim starlight glow instead of sun and the gesture was mostly pointless. "What in blazes?"

An impossibly wide wave of shining yellow light, higher than the Blue Castle's turrets, eased across the black and red landscape of our precious Anti-Fairy World. It moved in long hops like a leaping hare. My wings prickled. I couldn't see what became of the land behind it, only that it was forging forward, and like everything else, we were directly in its path. "Anti-Wanda?"

She watched me watch the wave of light. "Yeah?"

"Do you remember what that is?"

"Nope."

"Good. Then you won't panic when I start screaming my head off. Come on." I grabbed her wrist and shot back down to the training clearing in the trees. Ears flicked up. Heads turned. "All of you," I snapped, "Inside. Now! Reality-bending mind-warp wave heading this way. The Castle is protected. Inside now, now, now!"

The clouds rumbled beneath our feet. Birds took flight, feathers exploding in their wakes. I heard a tree crash to the ground somewhere I hoped was far away. One flick of my wand and the authority of being High Count was enough to throw open the double doors from here. Squeaking and squealing, the pups raced across the ground towards it, their wings fluttering at their backs. I counted each child as he or she disappeared inside. That one was Anti-Kanin's. That one was Anti-Julian's. That one was Anti-Kyler's. That one was mine.

Venus, Anti-Poof, and I had been the only adults out there- of that, I was quite sure. So when the last of us had scrambled inside, I heaved the great doors shut. Not a moment too soon. The light wave slammed against the other side and continued flickering up the walls. We could see it through the windows, tearing like fire as it raged, even though it didn't seem to be burning anything in its wake. It kept going right along. We were safe.

A certain nature spirit, however, had gone nuts under my skin the moment it passed over my head. My hands slipped off the doors. I dropped to my knees. "Oof! Sunnie?"

He writhed like a snake up and down my veins. I grabbed my stomach, leaning forward and fighting back the swelling in my throat.

"Anti-Cosmo?"

"Father?"

"High Count, sir?"

I ignored them all, warning them backwards with a snap of my wings. I heaved thin air through my fangs. My fingers slid up to my neck. Then down to my chest. I pressed the heel of my hand in hard, trying to feel him out, but he moved too fast underneath my skin. One moment I spotted a bulge shooting from my elbow to my wrist, and the next he was surging down my spine. Too many tingling sensations in too many places too fast forced my gag reflex. I spat a dash of acid on the floor, though fortunately no butterflies were there to join it. Good smoke, he was really upset about this, wasn't he?

My vision flickered dangerously close to black. Imaginary fingernails raked the lining of my stomach. "Sunnie!" I leaned even further forward, practically prostrate on the ground now. "Break the tie! Break the tie!"

The brooch on my cravat flared with bright blue light. I stopped drooling acid and instead coughed up spurts of water (which prompted "Eww"s from several of the gathered children). With an audible _kiff_ and a puff of white steam, the brooch tore from my cravat entirely and evaporated into a small cloud above my head.

"All of you," I growled at the pups, "get to the great hall and stay there. Now."

They moved reluctantly down the statue-lined corridor, but hovered at its end to watch me. I fixed my eyes on the little blue cloud in the air. Another few seconds passed. Then it dumped a sheet of rain on the ground in front of me. The puddle reformed into a man who, though crouched, was much taller than I was. His smooth blue skin was currently alight with bristling gooseflesh. His long hair, normally sweeping behind him like a very small river or a very long pegasustail, consisted of liquid. Or it was usually liquid, anyway. Right now, it had gone to steam, as had the two watery bracelets which typically ringed his wrists. Sunnie grabbed the sides of his open vest and held them, screeching and sputtering nonsensical noises.

"Oh, Sunnie, come now." I ran my hands down from his shoulder to his waist. There, his lower half dissolved into a darker turquoise tail like a genie's. When I touched him, the end whipped across my cheek with a slap like a wet towel.

"Sunnie?" I grabbed his shoulder. "Sunnie, I'm here. Julius Anti-Cosmo. Your medium. I'm right here. I'm right here, old boy. It's Anti-Cosmo. Hey!" I snapped my attention to the pups who had started to creep back in our direction. "I thought I told you ragamuffins to get inside the great hall. Anti-Wanda, could you spare a wand wave here?"

Oh. Right. She'd made it almost to the bottom of the staircase before she'd collapsed herself, holding both her ears. Apparently, even Munn had become unraveled by the events of today. I took half a second to stare at her, then flicked my focus back to Sunnie. He hadn't stopped wailing, but at least his erratic twitches were dying down. I slipped my hands behind his back.

"Shh, shh. What's happened? Is it your Temple? If those blasted pixies knocked it down again, I swear…"

"Pixies…" Sunnie had to shake his head after he spoke the word. His tail tensed beneath my hands. He knelt there, gazing down at me and still clutching his vest. "They're gone."

Not having expected that to be the first thing out of his mouth, I had to think it over for a moment. "Um. So, the pixies are gone, you say?"

"Yes." The word left him in a misty wheeze. I swiveled my ears. Then I reached up and placed my palm against his chest. He was warm there. Too warm. And still spasming a bit, even if he'd stopped screaming. Anti-Wanda whimpered over on my left. I forced myself to ignore her.

"Okay. Why are the pixies gone, Sunnie? Go on. It's Anti-Cosmo. I'm right here. It's me. You can tell your medium, can't you?"

Sunnie twitched. By the nature of his existence, his eyes were always wet, and thick with blinking lashes. Always crying, that man- he couldn't control that. Finally, he released the two sides of his vest. Instead, he slid his arms beneath mine and pulled me into his lap. His chin came down on my head, knocking my hat a flicker backwards.

"All the pixies born in my Water Year just up and dissolved. All of them. All at the same time. Like they evaporated. They just evaporated…" He chuckled. "Oh, that's a good joke. The Waters evaporating. I should tell that to Munn."

I removed my monocle. "I'm sorry?"

"Don't be. What's done is done. We'll adapt."

"No, I- I don't understand. Why did the Water Year pixies evaporate?"

Sunnie wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me forward, crushing my wings along my spine. His tail twisted around my foot. My face smooshed against his bare chest. His skin still rippled and burned beneath my cheek. Nearing the boiling point, if I had to guess, seeing as his bracelets and hair had not yet returned to their liquid form. "I don't know," he mumbled, and I twitched my ears as his voice dropped lower. "But I'm sure it's a trap. Someone's out to get me."

I pushed myself away from him and replaced my monocle again. "Bloody- Sunnie, don't start. The majority of the universe is not out to destroy you. You don't need to descend into conspiracy theories for every little- _Hey!_ Pups, back in the great hall. Sunnie, stay right here." I stepped past him and started down the corridor, sending the children diving with a series of yelps. Good. If I had to follow them in to ensure their little rears were firmly planted on the long benches, then so be it. If enough trouble was brewing to panic the zodiac spirits, I didn't want the children to hear it.

Anti-Poof actually was waiting in the great hall for me. He peered out the windows on the other side, fidgeting with the place around his middle where normally he would have found the hem of his shirt. "Hear anything?" I asked him.

"It's all quiet."

"Well, keep listening. I'd like to take Sunnie to my office, and we're going to see if we can sort this evaporating pixie nonsense out. I'll adjust the _poof_ -proof hexes so you can come straight to me if you have anything to report. Anti-Wanda and Munn are in charge." For the first time, I actually glanced around the great hall. Apart from the pair of us and the cheery pups who thought this was all good fun, the long tables were empty and the walls were liable to echo. I lowered my voice. "Assure the children there is nothing to be afraid of. It's a reality shift; happens all the time, and the Castle is protected by Tarrow's blood. See if Munn can't get them partying. It's Halloween, after all."

Anti-Poof watched me, still picking at the front of his uniform. "Do you think there's anything to worry about?"

"Sorry. I only know that Sunnie and Munn are quite upset, and they're blathering on about the Pixies."

He turned his attention out the window again. With a nod and a last scolding to the pups ( _"Behave_. Especially you, Talon"), I swept back towards the entry hall.

To my relief, Venus had recovered from splitting her own bond with Munn. Her earrings had vanished. She sat quietly on the bottom step of the staircase, and he perched on the spiraled end of the handrail. Venus had told me long ago that she herself interpreted Munn as a monkey, regardless of the fact that the Sky spirit had nothing to do with monkeys, simply because the two had the same sounds at the beginning of their names. Long ago, I'd envisioned him as more of a bat, with great wings like an Anti-Fairy's connected to his arms, but over time, her insistence had worn me down. So, a monkey he was to me.

Munn's fur practically glowed, looking as smooth and polished as the stone doors present throughout much of the Castle. He was dark blue, of course, and dappled with cloud-shaped patches of black in several places. The tip of his tail ended in a miniature ball of sunlight, which somehow lit dark corners of the hallway for me. I'd never quite figured out how that worked, with the whole, "The nature spirits manifest differently to everyone, even when viewed simultaneously" bit. Would a shadowy room be lit for me when for everyone else present, it remained strictly dark?

"Anti-Cosmo, I gots someone I'd like ya to meet." Venus waved up to the monkey on his perch. "This is Munn. See, I told ya he was cute."

I narrowed my eyes. I could have said a lot of things in response to that, but all that left my tongue was, "We've met. Where did Sunnie go?" I darted my eyes left and right. My hand clenched around the handle of my wand in its sheath. Munn shrugged.

"He said he felt his Temple shift to Faeheim, and he wanted to check up on it."

"… His Temple shifted." I pushed the star-shaped tip of the wand through my hair. "The Temple that grounds him to the cloudlands and functions as a Class 5 magical deadzone. It shifted. Have you lost your bloody mind?"

Venus shot me a sharp glance. "Anti-Cosmo!"

"Sorry." I lowered my wand and bowed stiffly in Munn's direction. My lips twitched. "I simply struggle to believe something could _move_ the Water Temple, that's all. Although… if anyone were going to do it, of course it would be the Pixies. They're always messing with our stuff. In fact, perhaps they're taking punishments for all of this right now."

The sentence wasn't even wholly out of my mouth before Sunnie _kiff_ ed back in a puff of warm steam. "We're in trouble," he said, grabbing my elbow. "Hey!" I cried. "Where are we going?"

He stormed towards the great hall without slowing down, tail swishing. "I am the strategist of the gods. My job is to find a meeting room and thrust all the appropriate authority figures I can find inside it so we can talk and all ensure we're on the same page."

I threw a helpless look towards Venus. She and Munn shrugged and followed us.

Sunnie pulled up short when he floated into the great hall. He pointed at the pups clustered along the nearest bench. "Why are there children in my war room? Get rid of them. Never mind; you're all too slow. Here." With a wave of his hand and a _kiff_ , they were gone.

Venus started at the shoulders. I grabbed my hair. "Sunnie! Where did you put them?"

"In the west tower. They're on consecrated ground, so I can move them anywhere within these walls. Not from here to my Temple as I would have liked to, of course, being mortals-"

"Well, bring them back! You've really gotten me fretting now about the reality shift, and I'm acting _in loco parentis_ for all of them. That's a lot of nasty parents to deal with should they be hurt."

Sunnie grunted, but waved his hand and did so. The pups materialized in a puff, the tips of their fur glistening with moisture. I rushed over to check them for burns while Sunnie made rapid shifts of parties all throughout the Castle. He would point to a random bench in the hall and drop one stunned camarilla member on it, then throw another across from them without apparent rhyme or reason in who went where. Within a minute, he had gathered nearly the entire set. Saturn too. Anti-Coleen yelped when he brought her in naked. Her hands flew to cover her tail. She _foop_ ed off again, but Sunnie dragged her back.

"I should like to be excused," Anti-Julian deadpanned, combing his claws through Debbie's dark hair. "The paint was drying in the waste area."

"I do like dry things," Saturn said wistfully. He curled his tail around Anti-Julian's feet; Sunnie hadn't moved him, the pair being un-tied and all, but he'd come along anyway. I interpreted the Fire spirit as a large wingless lizard, with scales running between golden and russet. His path didn't cross with mine often, but it was rarely pleasant when they did. Since he at least had the brains not to tease Sunnie directly, he often got his fun picking on Water years like me instead. I eyed him unhappily. Sure, he sat as though patient and willing to respectfully defer authority to the nature spirit leading this operation, but the dominance torches in the great hall had begun to glow fiery orange the moment he'd come in. No one could miss that.

"And I have to secure the greenhouse," Anti-Sylvester added.

Sunnie smacked both hands down on the table right in front of Anti-Kanin and Anti-Phillip. "No one goes anywhere until I strategize."

"I'm not decent!" Anti-Coleen protested. Sunnie focused on her with just one of his eyes.

"Stay exactly where I put you. We need to talk."

I sighed and turned away from the whispering pups on the bench. With a flick of my wand, I _foop_ ed her up one of the long nightshirts I liked to slip into when Venus was out traveling and I couldn't be bothered to fly up and roost alone on my perch, and planned to fall asleep across the parlor couch watching the ever-running Fairy World news channel on the crystal ball projection instead. Anti-Coleen's usual button-down shirt with its flowery collar would likely have been preferable, but I couldn't remember which drawer in the dresser was hers, and I didn't want to guess around and grab any of her golden jewelry by mistake. Nature spirits didn't exactly do well around gold.

"Now then, Sunnie. You've assembled our forces, and here we are. Tell us what information you have."

He glanced at the pups, then at me in irritation. But, evidently, he calculated the benefits of not freaking the children out any more than necessary. He folded his arms and floated over to Anti-Elliot by the passage that led behind Tarrow's zodiac mural and into the kitchens. "Plane 23 is shifting. The Adapter and Lady Hocopo are on the move."

He hadn't used the name "Darkness", but the pups erupted in nervous whimpering anyway. So did some of the camarilla. Exclamations flew back and forth like saucerbee discs. I pressed my hand against my chest. "Oh, gods. You can't be serious. He was beaten. The Chosen One…?"

Sunnie shook his head. Munn, who had started pacing along Tarrow's mural, said, "Maybe he fell asleep and missed his calling," with a grin.

I pressed my ears down with my claws, chewing on the insides of my cheeks. Then I looked at Anti-Poof and nodded towards the children. He got the message, and moved them to the far end of the great hall, up by the head table. Perhaps with a bit of construction paper and cobwebs, he'd be able to keep their little minds busy.

"Are they, um… moving together?" I asked Sunnie as he leaned back. None of the pups had ears developed enough to pick up on our whispers from far away yet, but Sunnie motioned the camarilla to gather close and lowered his voice anyway.

"He's progressing towards Tír Ildáthach. She's still feeding on what he left of Sprigganhame."

"No," Venus whispered. She pressed her folded claws to her lips. "The poor darling cub."

In response, Sunnie pointed at the enormous mural on the wall behind me. We all turned. In the upper left corner, the Ursa Red Like an Ember who represented Hy-Brasil stood erect, sniffing at the air. The smaller Ursa of Infinite Sunshine wobbled, trying to mimic her father, only to continuously drop back to all four paws and shake out her pelt as we watched. Ursa Avalon sat nearby, white and somehow smug with her golden nose tilted up as she looked over at the mural's opposite corner. In the upper right, the Ursa of Many Colors stood over a pale purple cub with a triangular splash of black on his snout. He lay motionless and apparently dead in front of her paws.

I swallowed. The simple representation of the Hocus Poconos was present there, too, with her beak low over Sprigganhame's still body. The night-black depiction of the Darkness paced back and forth across the mural's top, two arms behind his back and one more smoothing down his hair. From the way his fourth and final hand moved, adjusting his white suit and red bow tie emphatically, you would have thought he was preparing to court a very noble damsel. Through it all, Tarrow, the cosmic jellyfish, remained in the very center of the wall, his tentacles gently shifting from side to side.

"It will take both, ah, the Adapter and Lady Hocopo some time to finish their work," Sunnie said. "I think we can assume they're coming for us next. Then on up to the Refracted as they make their return to the official level of Plane 23."

I gripped my wand in my right hand. "What exactly do you mean, 'coming for us'? Why should they want to do that? The Castle is protected. We have sanctuary."

Sunnie scratched the place on his tail that otherwise would have passed for his thigh. "I can tell."

"Don't give me that rubbish. You're the one who doesn't like making ungrounded predictions. You like hard facts and evidence."

"I can sense the Reaper shade-jumping this way. That's evidence enough."

"The Grim Reaper too?" My voice rose halfway to a shriek, but Venus grabbed my wrist. With her fingers around my knuckles, I found I was able to steady myself out again. I adjusted my monocle.

Anti-Kanin leaned forward on crossed arms. "But the Refracted be much closer to Plane 23. What forces be steering them on this Deep Kingdom course?"

Sunnie shrugged. "All the Water-born pixies evaporated. I imagine they were more interesting than Refracts, so the Ancients simply tracked down the source."

Munn stopped pacing near the mural and flicked up his ears. Then he turned and threw his arms forward. "Eyyy! I see what you did there!"

Anti-Kanin nodded like this news of evaporating pixies wasn't actually news to him, but Anti-Kyler evidently hadn't heard this from Thurmondo; he still wore the green circlet of overlapping metal leaves around his head, after all, and somehow I wasn't surprised that the absentminded nature spirit hadn't panicked and manifested like Sunnie, Munn, and Saturn yet. "And the Sky pixie guys?" Venus asked, twisting about to look at Munn.

He flicked his tail her way. "Yeah, they went up too. Hang on, toots. I don't have a pun for this. Just give me a sec."

Saturn dipped his head to signify that the Fire pixies had also "incinerated", in keeping with the poetic elemental theme. Or, he was nodding to show that they hadn't. You never really knew with him. His claws drummed against the floor, tail flicking back and forth, until Anti-Julian hoisted him up into his lap.

"My point." Sunnie floated over to me again. "They went straight for Pixie World, and seem to be progressing outward from there. It's probable that whatever triggered their leave of Plane 23 originated in Pixie World itself." He thought for a second. "Well, of course they're still technically _on_ Plane 23, but you know what I mean."

I tapped my wand against my knee. "Yes, yes. Any idea what that huge event in Pixie World might be?"

Sunnie drummed his fingers along his folded arms. "That's not my area of expertise. I'm a scholar and a strategist. I work best with established information presented in front of me. My Temple isn't in Pixie World anymore." Mutters swept around the gathered camarilla, and I opened my mouth to protest, but he ignored everyone. "What I know is, the Adapter ravaged Pixie World, and Lady Hocopo herself came to scavenge when he had finished. She's still there. We can all sense that, can't we?"

Saturn dipped his head again.

"He's heading swiftly towards Faeheim," Sunnie finished. "That's all the information I have." He looked to me expectantly, then sat down on the floor with his tail tucked under him, folded hands resting against his lap.

"You said you thought your Temple had been moved from Inkblot City back to Faeheim."

"That's right."

I studied him, sitting there on clean ground. "Well, while that doesn't make any sense, it would appear you still have a Temple erected _some_ where. You're clearly not leaking Plane 23 ooze everywhere you step."

"It's in Faeheim," he repeated, glaring at me. His hair swished and splashed. "No, it doesn't make sense, but it's there."

"Like fireworks!" Munn shouted. We all looked at him, and he shuffled backwards. "Sorry. Just. Sky Year pixies." None of us laughed, and the grin slowly oozed from his face. He leaned his elbow on the bench where Venus sat and planted his fist beneath his chin. An expression of serious business now took its place. He gestured towards Sunnie with his tail. "Go on, bro. Totally listening."

"What about your uncle?" I asked, flicking my gaze between the three nature spirits.

"Which uncle?"

"Oh, uh… The Grim Reaper. You said he was coming. Where is his manifested form?"

Saturn, Sunnie, and Munn all pointed in different directions. I threw my hands into the air, then let them drop behind my neck.

"Thank you. That clears everything up."

"It does, actually. He's moving, and fast." Sunnie braced his hands on the floor and rose into the air again. "This seems as good a time as any to announce it, but if there are no objections, and I seriously don't care if there are, I am resigning."

Half the gathered camarilla inhaled, and the rest just stared at us. My mouth fell open. "I beg your sacred pardon?"

The look he shot me was nothing less than scornful. "The Adapter and the Reaper are on their way here, and Lady Hocopo will undoubtedly be on their heels. I'm not going to sit around twiddling my thumbs until they leech your blood and bones dry. If you have any further questions, ask them now. I am leaving for Plane 23 in five minutes with any nature spirit who wants to go."

Saturn coughed into a closed fist of claws. Munn rubbed behind his neck and dropped his gaze.

Venus shot to her feet. "Hey!"

"You are a coward!" I whipped my wand out before I remembered who I was pointing at. Anti-Edmin and Anti-Coleen both made moves towards me, but I flapped my wings hard to warn them back. I lowered the wand myself, though I didn't sheath it. My fangs ground together. "You would abandon us at the faintest inkling of trouble? Have you no sense of honor?"

"Staying here would be an illogical action." Sunnie brought his hands together, fingers pointed towards me, palms an inch apart. His eye twitched as he stared down at them. "I am nothing if not the sensible one in this family. If I stay here, I'll definitely be reclaimed. I can't afford to spend another million years waiting for society to rebuild itself, hoping some poor sap wanders into the ruins of my Temple's echo chamber. It's with this information that I have made my decision."

"The Blue Castle is protected."

Saturn started pacing circles around Munn, his tail flickering across the floor again. "Sure. With only one exception, no nature spirit gets through your defenses… unless they cross the boundary while kiff-tied."

I fingered the bare place on my cravat where I had formerly carried Sunnie's brooch. "You must be joking. The Darkness, the Grim Reaper, the Hocus Poconos, and whoever else they've dragged after them? Kiff-tying just to… do what to us? Kill us off for no reason?"

Sunnie gave me a sharp look, his watery eyebrows raised. "They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't have a good reason."

"Well! I suppose I can die knowing the spirits had a reason they wouldn't share with us then, wot?"

Venus lifted her hand towards me. "Hey, let's give the guys a chance. Maybe they don't wanna kill us."

"They wiped out the Pixies," Munn pointed out.

… Oh, gods.

The nature spirits wiped out the Pixies. Just- just- all of them. Mr. Sanderson, Mr. Longwood, Mr. Bayard… H.P. They wiped all of them and Sprigganhame out with a single blow.

The others continued talking, a few of them arguing now, but I tuned their voices out. Instead, I leaned back against the cosmic jellyfish on the mural behind me and covered my mouth with my hand. My eyelids squeezed shut. The nature spirits weren't joking about this, were they? I'd seen the reality shift wave with my own eyes, and the Pixie race was gone. The Darkness and the Hocus Poconos were on the move, and allegedly heading in our direction… What did it all mean? They didn't really plan to approach the Castle, did they? Of course not. We were protected.

… But the reality shift wave should have been encompassing. With limited exceptions, nothing could stand against it. The Castle alone remained as a protected safehaven, unless perhaps the Archives Building was protected too. We who resided in the Castle were the priests and priestesses of the spirits; we were allowed access to knowledge that suddenly became forbidden to the common folk after a major reality shift. What else would such powerful Ancients have descended to our level for, if not to confront us directly? What was so crucial that even our memories and realities required shifting as a result?

The Pixies were gone.

 _H.P._ was gone.

Sunnie's Temple had been shifted out of Pixie World, obviously by someone at the scene with major authority. Sprigganhame was dead. That entire piece of the cloudlands must be gone, along with all their buildings. All their paperwork, filed in triplicate.

"Anti-Cosmo," Sunnie said. "In two minutes, I am getting out of this doomed wasteland. Either with my brothers, or on my own."

Munn and Saturn pretended to be very engrossed in mural behind me. I stared at Sunnie, dull and blank. I didn't even care. "And going where, may I ask?"

"As far across the universe as I conceivably can."

"Look here." Finally I sheathed my wand and pushed my fingers through my hair. "Far be it for me to stand in the path of a demigod, but before anyone settles on any plans, may I point out that your central manifestations are bound to your Temples. In that grounded state, there are four things you can do without a medium. You can draw items out of your Temple, you can shift things around within your Temple, you can kill off your peripheral manifestations and restrict yourselves wholly within your echo chamber, you can kiff-tie, and that's it. No water powers. No fire powers. No sky powers. Not without a medium. You need us. Just think about that."

Sunnie opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, a single sentence ripped through the air above our heads with a crack like a mudslide.

 **TWIS IS RECLAIMED**

Nobody moved. Not for an entire minute. Only the pups squeaked and giggled, holding up their art knives and tubes of glitter glue. Sunnie's fingers skidded across the nearest tabletop. Then they moved to his face. Very slowly, he knelt down between the tables and bent his head. Saturn and Munn drifted over to set their hands on either of his shoulders. I twitched my ears as I listened to the rub of nervous immortal skin fingering nervous immortal skin. Between glances through the nearer windows, Anti-Poof had done a fair job distracting the kids with Halloween decorations. Even so, they had clearly noticed the adults fighting and were watching us whenever they could. Talon had shifted awfully far down the bench in our direction.

I turned around and took a long look at the painted image of the Water Temple along the bottom of the mural, standing in a row among six other Temples of all different shapes. The mural was connected to the real thing. While the designs on the wall were simple, there was no mistaking it. Sunnie's square Temple - the modern one that the Pixies had rebuilt after what H.P. had done to the first - had regained the pillars from its Faeheim days. The representation of Sunnie's central manifestation, painted in the middle, wasn't straining against his little black chains. He quivered on the floor, little legs pulled to his chest and his head bowed.

The painted nature spirits in the other six Temples looked much the same way, with Saturn the only one up on his feet and kicking at the ground. The Soil Temple was a blank, empty triangle.

What did it all mean?

I sighed. I hadn't even changed out of my one-piece combat uniform yet (and yes, I'd been wearing the cravat and Sunnie's brooch during training in the hopes of teaching the man not to flinch and squirm in my veins at the sight of magical blasts flying towards my face; we hadn't gotten the "Break the tie on short notice and take a devastating blow to spare the medium" trick down yet). "Go if you want to," I told him. "You're an immortal, you rank above me, and I will make no attempt to bar your path. But realize that you had your chance to stand with us, who carried your favors so faithfully until the end, and you rejected us. Even after all we sacrificed for you. We'll figure this out on our own."

The protests flew after me as I moved towards the great hall door, my hand trailing along the wall. "High Count-" "Father-" "Julius-" "Papa-" "Anti-Cosmo-"

"Hey." Anti-Poof said suddenly. He stood up and flew over to the window nearest him. "You're the Grim Reaper."

I whipped around, as did most everyone else assembled. I hurried between the tables, bumping camarilla members out of my way, with Sunnie, Munn, Saturn, Venus, and Anti-Julian all on my heels. The camarilla and the pups clumped around us too, necks craning. Sure enough, the Reaper's manifested form stood in the courtyard outside, clothed from head to tiny feet in brown robes with his face hidden in the shadows of his hood. His scythe floated in the air beside him. My wand was out before I even realized what I was doing. I shoved Anti-Poof in Venus's direction and placed myself between them and the Reaper.

"I am High Count and ruling head of the Blue Castle colony," I spat. "This is a consecrated building, and you aren't welcome beyond the bars on that window. Have you any business with us, pass it along to your team."

The Reaper lifted his shriveled gray hands. "Stop freaking out. That's not why I'm here. I just want to talk before my brother shows up."

"Which one? You _all_ refer to one another as brothers, and that doesn't exactly clear things up for us."

His head tilted. "Which name do you guys use in the cloudlands again? You know. Big soul-sucking scary guy. Dark and swirly. Freaky echo voice. Ability to erase you from existence and rebuild you any way he wants according to the natural laws of the universe. Likes churros and long walks through the graveyard."

I lowered my wand. "So the Darkness, then? That description rings familiar, but those of us kiff-tied with the zodiacs or within the protected walls of the Castle only see him in his manifested form. As we do you at the moment."

"Oh, right. Well, he's that guy." The Grim Reaper flapped both hands, then set them to his waist. His long fingers bunched up the cloth. "Anyway, he's like, on his way over here soon to recalibrate you all and some stuff, but he had to hit the rest stop first. Waaay too much sugar in that last soda. I thought I'd _kiff_ over here and catch you guys up to speed before all Darkness breaks loose."

Munn, who had taken up a perch on Venus's shoulder, pointed two fingers at him. "I see what you did there."

"Yeah, so…" The Reaper moved his hands in front of his chest and tapped his fingers together. "We've kind of got a problem with the whole stabilizing reality business up top. We were hoping you guys would step outside your Sanctuary so we could suck out your souls and get you resituated in the new world order we're trying to put together. It'd save us a lot of grief. Also paperwork. We kind of just came from wiping out Sprigganhame and all the Pixies, so we can't just push it all on them anymore like we used to."

Sunnie glanced at me. I glanced at Venus. She glanced at Munn. He glanced at Saturn. He glanced at Anti-Julian. He glanced at Anti-Kyler, who had become quite jittery all of a sudden and backed away. I sheathed my wand again. "That's not really a very enticing option. All things considered, I happen to like this universe well enough. I have my family. I have my people. I'm happy here. How do you mean 'wiping out Sprigganhame and all the Pixies'? What prompted this reality-shift?"

The Reaper shrugged. "I didn't have any pixies left to go over the paperwork with me. I didn't read why we were doing it, only that it had to be done. They didn't really fit in our plans, so we just eliminated them instead for tax reasons. Now, are you coming out here or what? You know if you don't step out here willingly, we're going to have to come in there and shake you down. I don't like causing property damage. That's not really my thing, and I can't afford to get sued for B&E. I've got student loans."

I crossed my arms. "Even I know that's against Da Rules. The Pink, Blue, and Gold Castles were gifts to Fairykind from Mother Nature and Father Time themselves. This is a private safehaven for the devout of the Zodii beliefs. We're granted immunity from your memory wipes and permitted to know all that you do. We are priests and philosophers who adhere to your rules. You have no authority to compromise our rights by inflicting a shift on us within these walls."

"Yeeeeeaaaah…" The Reaper walked his pale fingers up one of the bars on the window. His other hand tightened around his scythe. "Well, Big D's not going to be very happy that you're resisting. Okay, let me say it again. Just so we're all together on the same page, you know he's gonna bust down the door when he gets here, right?"

"Ooh-hoo-hoo, not alone, he certainly isn't. Do you plan to combine forces with him?"

He rubbed behind his head and tilted his face towards the red sky. "A _bou_ t that. Yeah, I- I don't really wanna be here when he shows up. You know we gotta do the whole…" He made a _The wheels on the tram cable go round and round_ gesture with his forefingers. "Kiff-tying bit to disable your stuff manually. I mean, you smokies are lucky you don't get pregnant off the thing, but I'm the weaker and submissive nature spirit, so I kinda have to… you know. The massive energy release has to manifest into _something_. Which I'm sure you guys get, considering how many thunderstorms-"

" _Hey!_ " Saturn, Munn, and Sunnie all shouted at the same time. I glanced anywhere but at Venus as Munn shoved his fingers in her ears. "These guys don't need to hear the talk about where clouds come from again. And that's private anyway."

Sunnie leaned down and muttered to me, "Says the guy who's not exactly subtle when he and Saturn start getting cozy."

Munn's ears twitched forward. "Shut up. He's smokin' hot. Dad had him with Morning, and me with Evening. We're as balanced as light and dark. Can you really blame us?"

"And we're not half as bad as Winni and Thurmondo," Saturn added with a stubborn swipe of his tongue across his teeth.

"Not helping," Anti-Kyler wheezed. He'd fallen to his knees, both hands around the green circlet on his head.

Munn pushed the argument further with, "Yeah, flit down to Earth and you can just _smell_ the oxygen in the air. Oh wait, I forgot how distracted you get once you're around soil."

"Whoa." Sunnie lifted his hands. "Mud is a tool of creation used for sculpting shelters for millions of creatures. Twis and I are helping. What good is lightning except for tearing things apart?"

Saturn snapped forward, but Anti-Julian scooped him in his arms and held the fiery lizard against his neck like an angry black kitten. Venus placed her hand on Munn's chest as his muscles tensed. "Hey, let's jist cool off and stop pickin' fights, huh?"

"Spirit fight, spirit fight, spirit fight," several of the pups chanted ("Talon," Venus called, "can't ya jist make nice pictures with your sisters?")

"We can't afford to let ourselves become divided," I said. The nature spirits drew apart to sulk in opposite corners of the great hall. When they'd gone, I cleared my throat and narrowed my eyes at the Grim Reaper. He hadn't moved. "I'm sorry, but I will not risk my people when it's unclear what shall become of us should we allow our minds to be wiped and our worlds to shift beneath our feet. We will stay firmly within these walls until whatever reality-bender that has been cooked up here runs its course. You can hold us under siege, but we will not give in."

The Reaper folded his arms behind his head and leaned back. "Mmm. Okay, it's your funeral and you can freak if you want to. For the record, we tried to be nice about this. If my brother asks, my team and I are very busy chasing down Solis Infinitum and the anti-pixies right now, and I'm totally unavailable as far as he is concerned."

He disappeared in a puff of steam with another _kiff_. Anti-Kyler's coughing died off. The others pulled him up to his feet, murmuring about Thurmondo, but he shrugged and went to check up with his little son and the construction paper scraps. I glanced at Venus, who shrugged at me. She went to find Munn by the passage to the kitchens. I sought Sunnie out near the head table on its dais. First, I ran my finger down the second chair I passed. That one was upholstered with a soft red cushion which had molded to my shape long ago.

I had to stand for a moment, gripping the chair's back, and stare down the length of the great hall. It had been emptier than this before, of course. But it had never felt so bleak and lonely. Normally the sight of cobwebs and large spiders clinging in the shadows near the tops of the surrounding pillars would have delighted me. But they didn't.

Past the table, Sunnie had taken up a place near the door that led into the passage behind the head table, where the High Count's and Countess' offices were tucked away. Rather than pace like his other two brothers, he twitched his tail back and forth like a conductor leading music.

"They're up to something," he muttered to me, eyeballing Saturn and Munn. "Those two are partners. They're gaining up against me. Since Twis has been reclaimed, I'm just as single as Dayfry. I'm the weakest link. A sitting phoenix."

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. "Sunnie, they're on our side."

"How do we know?" he demanded. He'd started to wring his hands. One of his bracelets began to steam up, and the leaking in his eyes had gotten worse. "Those two make up the pair of destruction. They probably love to see us panic like Refracts with their heads cut off. How can we trust them? I've revealed so much about our potential strategies. They heard what I said. They might sell me out. I didn't plan for this!"

"Hey." I touched his wrist. "I'm here. If you're willing to stay, then I promise I'll look out for you. We're in this together now. Spirits, High Counts, pups, staff- all of us."

Sunnie probed at my stomach with his tail, then took my lack of protest as consent to loop it around my torso. He pulled my head against his chest again and rested his chin in my hair. "Anti-Cosmo, I shouldn't have broken our kiff-tie. I miss feeling you from the inside, you wrapped around me like a shield and shell. Being out here makes me feel so naked. I hate it."

And we'd have to reinstate the tie at some point now. Assuming our defenses held up that long. I released my bottom lip. "Well, I don't mind that you broke it. It seems you've made the right choice. You're helping us with all your talk of strategy."

When he pressed his stomach against mine, I could have sworn I felt it flip. The end of his tail tightened around my legs. He let one hand run from my hair, down my cheek, and settle against my shoulder. "Hmm. Twis was reclaimed, and he wasn't even out in the field with a medium. If our Temples are no longer safe, then where are we to go? How can we make a stand against the Ancients? We can't hold them off indefinitely. One, yes, but the fact that three of them are actively hunting us renders our chances of getting out of this situation unscathed effectively nonexistent. I don't deal well with those kinds of odds."

I scratched the bridge of my nose. "We'll think of something. I mean… Did you change your mind about fleeing across the universe?"

"For now."

At least that was good news. I sighed in quiet relief. "You mentioned Refracts. Let's slip back to my office. I have an idea."

His fingers tightened against my skin. "It's pointless. The Ancients have more wit, more brawn, more magic-"

"Sunnie, _enough_. Much more of this and you'll work _me_ into a fit, and then who'll be left to keep the colony in line?"

Sunnie peered past me and across the great hall. I paused and glanced back. The cooking staff had clustered together by the door of the kitchen passage, hands white with flour and brown with dough, or wearing aprons spattered with blood and meat. I moved my fingers to my monocle.

"Everyone?" A hush fell. Faces turned at my call. I adjusted my wings and lifted my hand. "There is no need to be f _rrr_ ightened. Stay here and chat pleasantly in the great hall for a time if you like, or return to work if you'd rather. Anti-Wanda and I are retreating to our offices now with Sunnie and Munn. Saturn and Anti-Julian are just about to make a perimeter check. Should you need to inform me of any pressing developments, speak with Anti-Poof."

Murmurs of consent filtered through the air, along with the curious voices of the pups. A few of the cooking staff shook their heads and retreated down the passage behind Tarrow's mural. Others settled uncertainly on the benches, smoothing their aprons down with messy hands. Munn and Venus started towards us. Sunnie tapped my elbow.

"Should we check the map room?"

I pressed my lips together. "I'm not sure there's time for that. I want to contact Dame Cosmo, and it may already be too late."

Behind me, Munn cleared his throat with a noise like distant thunder. "Anti-Cosmo, I want to stay." Though she was taller than him, he led Venus onto the dais with us by her hand. "With your permission, I'd like to kiff-tie with Anti-Wanda again. I'll stay here with the rest of you until the cold, bitter end. This is consecrated ground, right? It'll totally work."

"We may not have time to…" I pinched my nose. "Fine. But isn't this a risk? If you're killed without a Temple, you'll die for good and-"

"-and she'll die with me if we're tied when it happens. I know. I know." Munn lifted his shoulders. "But my Temple's fine. Completely untouched. The Ancients passed right over it. They weren't even interested in looking." He itched behind his neck and dropped his gaze. "Which is probably lucky for me, considering how wild a party my place can get. I'm probably overdue for a scolding to pick up my room, heh heh… Oh boy, I've got some things I really need to sweep under my echo chamber door. If the Hocus Poconos told Mom what I've been doing up here, I'd really get my ears yanked."

I wrinkled my nose. "Hmm. How fast can you be?"

Both he and Venus snorted with the beginnings of laughter. But they caught my glare and shut up. Munn made an up and down gesture with his hand. "Uh, prince of the Sky spirits. My field bonus is speed. Give us a bit of privacy and twenty seconds."

I grimaced. "Frankly I'm terrified to press you for details. Whatever happened to Seven Minutes on Plane 23?"

"Who do I look like to you? Winni? That's not my style. But you're on board with this?" Munn scrambled up Venus, gripping with both hands and feet, and swung himself onto her left shoulder. Then he slid behind her head and perched himself on her right. His tail waved in the air behind him, the tiny light ball glowing bright. "I just like to ask, since she's your wife. We're not cheating on you."

I dipped my head. "Yes, so long as you're both in agreement, you may kiff-tie as you wish. Your honor is appreciated, Prince Monday. But do be as quick as you can be about it."

"Shore thing, sugar. Don't you worry 'bout a thing."

I glanced past Venus and over the great hall again. The children were still close. Too close. So I motioned her in with a twitch of my claw. Raising my hand beside her ear, I whispered, "Once you've tied, escort the pups to the basement. Try not to cause a panic. Take the tunnel that opens near Abracatraz. Not a moment's hesitation- Pixie World was on Plane 3, and Faeheim is on Plane 5. To get up here to Plane 8, the Darkness and the Hocos Poconos will, well… have to keep coming up."

Her eyebrows pressed together. Her crooked teeth bunched up her lower lip. She made light fists with her fingers. "What exactly are ya sayin', sug?"

"I'm saying Plane 1 is in the opposite direction of where the Darkness appears to be going. The encompassing reality shift wave is over. You'd be in the opposite direction, and it's highly unlikely he'll head all the way back down the planes again." Not unless he really, really wanted her. The Ancients never went after anyone they weren't directly targeting; they didn't care if a handful of puny mortals went on with their lives with memories intact. Not unless it was that important. I closed my eyes. "Get the pups, get out, and get safe. Hunker down in the tunnel safehouse near the Abracatraz exit so you have an escape route if Munn alerts you the Ancients are coming. But if at all possible, get him to the Vegon system. That _is_ where he and Winni hid the Wind Wand, isn't it?"

Venus dropped her gaze to her feet as Munn began to pick through her hair with his fingers. "Yeah, but…"

I shook her by the shoulders. "Then activate it. Munn built the thing- he ought to be capable of overriding the Chosen One lock. Isn't that right?"

"Anti-Cozzie, I don't think that's how it wor-"

I shut her up with a kiss while Munn grinned, Sunnie politely looked away, and both our kids hovered at the base of the dais, fidgeting from foot to foot. Did one of them want to speak to us? I didn't care long enough to determine who.

Finally, one of them- "Seriously, Father, do let her go."

The other- "Yes, if you don't mind me pointing out-"

Venus popped our lips apart with a gasp. Then she whirled around, her finger flying. "Hey, you gots a butt. I don't care what crafts you was workin' on with the littles or which one of ya thinks you's in charge, but I wantcha ta hustle to that bunker right _now_ if ya don't want me ta make ya a wee bit less of a free-tail."

Two hands went for wands. _Foop!_ A thick puff of smoke, and they made themselves scarce together without a hint of squabbling between them. I adjusted my bare cravat with a smirk. Who was to interrupt my kisses now?

"Don't," Sunnie warned.

"But I don't wanna go, Anti-Cozzie," Venus said, turning to me again. "I'm High Countess. I wanna do this standin' t'gether."

"Exactly!" I grabbed her hands. "We're working in sync, if apart. For the good of our people. Venus, they need a leader. Gather the cooking staff. Round up the cleaners. Alert the gardeners. Recruit the camarilla to help you. Go with them. You're a traveler. You know the intimacies of the cloudlands a hundred times better than I do. Take care of them for me."

Venus did not let go of my fingers. "You say 'They need a leader' like you ain't expecting ta be one by tonight."

"Anti-Wanda, don't be daft now! I'm an Anti-Fairy. Should the worst come to the worst, I'll regenerate."

Her lashes flickered. Her beautiful pink eyes shut as though sudden dark clouds had just swallowed up the stars. "Aw, I wish ya'd let me stay and help. But I know what you's doin'. I trust ya. One thousand percentage." She kissed my thumbs together, claws and all, and let my hands drop. "Fortune smiles."

"Keep the kids safe. All of them."

"Yep yep."

We nodded to each other before splitting off in opposite directions. I stopped before I made it past Sunnie to the door and turned back. "Venus, darling?"

"Huh?"

I flew up to her, grabbed her by the waist, and pushed her into the back of the nearest chair with one last kiss. She was salty, peppery, just as always. And still half-stunned when I shoved her away and took off for my office, Sunnie flying through the door after me.

* * *

 **TO BE CONTINUED**

 **Part 2: The Ended**


	37. (128-2) This Is Halloween: The Ended

**128.2 This Is Halloween: The Ended** (SYSTEM ERROR)

 _Year of NO ERROR, Autumn of the LACK OF ERROR_

* * *

I flung the door that led out to the great hall's dais shut behind me, regardless of the wispy tip of Sunnie's tail. All right. I considered taking a split second to pause and gather my bearings, then didn't. They could gather their jolly selves on their own time.

The door immediately to my left led into Venus' office. I skipped it and grabbed the one on the other side of the family portrait that hung between them. Mine. Sunnie bobbed curiously about the office front to poke at cabinets and shelves of scrolls, but I brushed past him and headed straight for the closet to the right of my desk. It had a keyhole, but not a key. I simply twisted the knob and the door swung open. The insides were dark, but not half as cluttered as the rest of my workspace. I puffed out my cheeks.

"Let's see here. Where would I have put the thing?" I tapped my chin, studying my diplomatic staff, with the wavy black handle, beads dangling from its branching arms, and the tiny emerald dragon at the top who occasionally crawled up and down the staff's length and sometimes a short ways up my arm. He lifted his head and flickered his tongue in greeting when he saw me. I nodded back to him, then dropped down to one knee to search among three dozen cardboard shoe boxes stacked along the closet's bottom. Each was color-coded and labeled. My sliding gaze stopped abruptly on a gray box with a black lid.

Pixie World was gone. The Pixie race was gone. H.P. was gone.

I chewed on my lip for a second, my hand up towards the doorknob, ready to pull myself the rest of the way up and search any other space in the closet, but for a moment, I could do nothing but stare at the gray box.

This wasn't right. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Instead of all this nonsense about Ancients and kiff-tying, I should be attending Longwood's coronation as new Head Pixie on short notice this evening. The Navy, Teal, and Maroon robes were supposed to contact me, deliver the news that the old wasp had kicked the bucket down the wishing well. I ought to be making preparations for his funeral services in accordance with Daoist traditions.

H.P. was gone.

Reality didn't work that way. Not really. Not like this. He'd been promising me for years that the day he expected to die, he'd slip a set of files into my hand which outlined precisely how he wanted everything organized, and contained everything he'd always promised to tell me about his past or his experimentation with magic and all the things he swore he'd never revealed even to his pixies- things he always seemed eager to share when the topics came up in conversation, and yet always procrastinated doing for Rhoswen knows why. Always with a jesting tone, but we knew he meant it, deep inside: His pixies were orderly thinkers who would get the arrangements made according to schedule. However, even he wanted his services to carry an emotional touch around the edges. Though I did not wear one of the pointed yellow hats with their purple spirals across the bottom, I was in a sense an honorary pixie myself. The only Anti-Fairy in the universe he specifically requested to be in attendance. His first choice. I was _always_ his first choice.

I should be donning my mourning shawl and pinning the mountain-shaped Soil clasp in place against my chest, for though the Head Pixie wasn't my immediate family…

He could have been.

I wished he was.

… No. The box would have to stay in the closet where it was, stacked among all the dusty others. According to tradition, I wasn't supposed to leave the room once I lit a mourning candle, and my people were counting on me. That's why they called me High Count, after all. Best not to dwell on the Pixies' fate right now.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, forcing my gaze away from the box. Standing, I shoved water-blue outfits on hangers to the sides and searched the compartments behind them. "You deserve a real mourning period, old friend. I'll get to you later, when my people aren't in danger. You'll get a proper send-off. You'll get your candle. I'll do it right. I'm not giving up on you. I promise."

The first compartment in the back of the closet was stuffed with magical amulets. The second with an ornate white chest filled with black handkerchiefs and colored rings. In the third, I found the silver box I was looking for and drew it out. It went down on my desk. Sunnie's river-like hair flared up instantly before dropping with a plop down his back like a waterfall. He set his teeth.

"Here it is!" I unlocked the box, and it immediately played a familiar Zodii tune. I flicked my finger back and forth along with it for a moment, then unfolded the tattered scarlet cloth inside and lifted out the golden bridle.

"Oh, that's disgusting." Sunnie made a few gurgling noises like the tide sucking around bare ankles and pulling out again. "You still have that?"

"But of course. I'm High Count. Why shouldn't I have it? Dear me, I hope this thing still works. It almost looks more brass than gold." I stared at the bridle for a beat more, then raised my eyes. "Ohh, Sunnie~"

Sunnie backed away until he hit the sliding door that opened directly into Venus' office. He fumbled behind him for the lock, which couldn't have been easy for him since his own personal interpretation of himself was more like a lynx made of black crystals than a water genie, and the lock mechanism too intricate for crystal fingers. "Anti-Cosmo, don't do this. It's demeaning."

I sighed, lowering the bridle to a stack of parchment on my desk. "Sunnie, we're dealing with a major nature spirit here. We really ought to make sure it still works before we get ourselves in a thin pickle. Come on. I'll take it off when we're done."

"That's what all my mediums say. They always promise, and they always lie." Sunnie gave up searching for the lock and banged his fist on the door, still without turning his focus from me. His tail swished back and forth as I took up the bridle again and started to approach. "Don't! My powers are at your command. I submit myself to you. Don't take away the last bit of freedom I have."

I hadn't had to bridle a nature spirit in centuries, and particularly not Sunnie. Venus could catch Munn off guard easily, because without fail, he always paused to glance over his left shoulder in response to someone's shout of, "Good smoke, what in Tarrow's name is that?" Sunnie, however, was much too attentive and smart to fall for the same trick, even at his most fidgety. Now, how had I done this last time…?

"Oh, all right. You win." I turned my back and fit the bridle over my own head. The bit slipped into my mouth, so heavy that it almost made my knees buckle. My fingers moved down to fiddle with the throatlatch. "I suppose I'll just have to do the hard part all by myself. Fortunately, I should be able to manage. I'm awfully clever. Well, I suppose you may be excused, Sunnie. Your brains are clearly not needed here."

Silence.

I continued my work, tonguing the bit and wishing I could whistle as I went about it. Sunnie bobbed closer until I could feel the droplets from his watery hair dribbling against my ears. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, just planning things. Nothing to concern yourself about."

"Exactly what things are you planning?"

I didn't reply.

"What things are you planning, Anti-Cosmo?" Then, louder this time, "Anti-Cosmo? What things are you planning?"

"Oh, it's nothing. You wouldn't be interested."

"It's not nothing! I'm very interested. Tell me your secrets. Don't leave me out of the loop."

Still ignoring him, I continued to adjust the browband. Sunnie continued to watch.

Suddenly, he slapped me on the back of the head. My monocle flew from my eye and bounced on its cord. "I am the strategist who calculated and executed the finest, infallible tactics of the Sealing War. You have no right to exclude me from these proceedings. You need me."

"Give over, or else I'll imagine you as a tubby ball of lard." Still not turning to look at him, I shoved my foot back against his stomach and flared my wings. "I told you, your help is not required."

" _Give me_ the bridle, Anti-Cosmo."

"Never! You didn't want it!"

Sunnie's tail smacked my feet from behind, hard and fast. He flipped me backwards that way, and when I had lost my balance, he slammed me by the neck to my desk. Four icy fingers closed over my throat in a warning squeeze. With his other hand, he unclasped a few points on the bridle and pulled it off my head.

"Harness me," he demanded, holding it out. He removed his hand and let me straighten up. "It's for the greater good. It's a powerful weapon and we need to ensure it still works before we bring it to the battlefield."

"Gods, you're insufferable. I hope you realize the only reason I put up with you at all is for your fantastic brains." I swiped the bridle from his hand and huffed through my nostrils. "Oh, all right. You win. Kneel down."

Sunnie did so, curling his tail off to the side. He stared stubbornly up at me as I began to fit the bridle around his face. "You know," I said as I slipped the bit into his mouth, "perhaps this was a good idea after all. Clever thinking, Sunnie."

"Of course," he managed around it, pulling a face at the tang of soft gold on his tongue. He licked the bar a couple of times. "I'm the strategist. I hope you weren't expecting anything less."

"You're certainly brilliant."

"The smartest of my brothers."

I chuckled as I finished my work and stepped back. "You are indeed. Now." The reins to the bridle lay across my left palm. I gave a soft tug. Sunnie immediately shifted from the floor into the air and came over to hover by my shoulder. I switched hands and tugged again, and he moved beside my other shoulder. "Well. Everything seems to be in order on the physical side of things. You're mine now. Which power should I try first?"

"Do the flowing acrobatics field bonus agility show. I never get to watch that when we're tied, and it makes me dizzy when I have to see it through your eyes anyway."

"No, there isn't enough room in here for that. I'll knock over the cabinets and scatter my papers… though of course, they're already rather scattered, aren't they? Oh, I know." I turned my back and flung open the turquoise curtains behind my desk. An owl roosting on the window ledge took flight with a startled pip. My fingers clenched around Sunnie's reins. "Let me see if I remember how to do this…"

I was a singer by nature. I always had been, though the ability had escalated steeply during my adolescence (and I deny being anywhere near my counterpart's cloudcar when he hit Wanda with it that fateful evening when first we'd met). Still rubbing the golden reins between the pads of my forefinger and thumb, I wrapped a hand around the leftmost bar of the window and closed my eyes.

" _Oh, the weather outside is frightful, yet the faithful remain delightful. The days just keep passing slow. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow… Oh, the worshipers keep on off'ring, with the possible medi'ms proff'ring. Yet I'm still restrained below. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. And when we finally do kiff-tie… How I'll hate to go out in the storm. But I've waited for this so long, and I'll adjust to this mortal form…!"_

The flakes came as I continued singing. Softly at first, some of them still warm enough to be rain, but they caught on fast. Trailing off, I reached my out with my fingers, then flicked out my tongue to scoop up some more.

"It works," Sunnie said, watching me watch the twisting snowflakes settle on the drawbridge far below (Why hadn't we ever reeled that up? Oh, never mind- the protection would be effective anyway). "Well, that's that. You said you were going to unharness me now."

"Did I?"

"Yes. I was paying attention."

I tapped one claw to my cheek, pretending to think over the question as I shifted my focus away from the snowflakes and they stopped falling. I turned to face him again. "That sounds like a promise I made before you started being disagreeable."

Sunnie's ever-teary eyes traced along the reins to my hand. Then they flicked up to my face. He bent his head, teeth audibly clenching . The river that poured from his head sloshed back and forth a bit more fiercely. One of his bracelets steamed. "Will you unharness me, _please_ , esteemed High Count?"

"Flattery gets you nowhere with me. You know this by now." I spun my swivel chair back towards my desk and plopped down. "Stay right there where you won't get into any trouble. I have some work to do, and I don't need you getting distracted and zipping off."

"I," he seethed, "don't _get_ distracted."

"Well, I do. And you're the biggest distraction of the lot." I studied the jumbled scrolls, ink stains, old tomes, all the pestering reminders H.P. had sent me about our brunch a few weeks back that I hadn't gotten around to disposing of yet, and sandwich crumbs on my desk, then decided to ignore all of them. It wasn't like it would really matter. "Keep track of the Ancients," I said, folding my wings. "Refocus me immediately if they approach the Castle, or if anyone should come in here seeking me. If I seem to get lightheaded from being upright so long and tip over, wake me up."

Sunnie perked up. His fingers and eyes appeared over the edge of my desk. "What sort of work are you doing?"

"First of all, a long-distance mind-meld." I put my hand through his watery hair and pushed his head back down. "Please sit still and be quiet. I need to concentrate, and Cosmo Prime and Dame Cosmo can hear through my ears while the meld is active, you know."

Sunnie curled up on the floor beside my chair to pout into his crossed arms. I glanced down at him only once, and let him stay that way as I turned my attention inward. Removing my monocle, I wrapped it in my black handkerchief and lay it to the side. Then I folded my hands and placed them both against my nose. Eyes shut.

One inhale.

One exhale.

One inhale.

One exhale.

I synced to Cosmo first, and gagged immediately. What time was it… wherever his and Wanda's latest godkid lived, again? He had meat on his tongue, wherever it was, and he'd clearly gotten into the spirit of Halloween, too. The insides of his mouth were all marshmallow mush and unsalted taffy. I'd tasted sugar through his mouth far too many times, thank you, and the tang of that junk rotting your fangs never became any more bearable. He choked on a chunk of something roasted and something sweet when our minds melded together.

"Now, now," I said aloud, twitching my ears, "I don't want to hear any complaining. Not that I can hear you over there anyway. Look here. This is a potentially cloudland-wide emergency. Sister Unseelie? Are you there?"

No response. My vision stayed completely black. In this half-melded state, I couldn't even detect the usual faint glow of my eyes against my eyelids. There was nothing at all. I tightened my fingers against one another in front of my nose.

"Sister Unseelie? Woman, pick up. This is important."

No response.

"Cosmo, help me get through to her. On the count of three, hear. Do you understand? I'm going to count to three, and we're both going to give a shove. One. Two. Three."

I waited half a second before I combined my efforts with his, recognizing the likelihood of him delaying until well after "Three". With a pop, our connection snapped into place. She had sight. He had smell and taste. We'd kept our individual senses of touch. I had the ears. My two counterparts could hear anything I spoke aloud, though them communicating verbally with me would be pointless, as my preferred sense was limited to my immediate surroundings. But, when Cosmo and I successfully pressed at Dame Cosmo's consciousness, the black in my vision flickered away to be replaced with agonizing sunlight and rolling fields of gold and white.

… Or rather, it should have.

"Uh," I said.

For someone who lived on a plane of existence situated so close to the heavenly one, Dame Cosmo always seemed so determined not to take advantage of paradise. Cosmo and I found her on her knees, pawing through a heap of compost in apparent search of something edible, or something valuable accidentally thrown away. Gray, vapory muck and brown mud from the dirt that had been brought up from Earth clung up and down her feathered arms. Rather than the pastel robes so common in her culture, she wore a pink dress decorated with white spots. Her headband kept slipping forward until it landed on her hooked nose, its huge flower petals waving and drooping as she bobbed her head.

"Sister Unseelie? There's an emergency situation playing out here in the Deep Kingdom at the moment. Perhaps you've heard of it. I have a favor to ask. Pixie World has collapsed. What can you tell me of their refracts?"

Dame Cosmo slowed her digging through the compost heap. She smoothed out two folds of her dress with a dirty hand. Then she got up and floated a short ways towards one of the recently-harvested and now bare wheat fields until she found a nice, soft patch of dirt. Crouching down, she wrote with her long talon, _All rps are gone except Head._

"The other refract pixies? So they did- One moment, darling. Cosmo! Can't you stop eating that fermented rubbish, whatever is is? Oysters and clam chowder, if I'm not mistaken? You know how I get about meat. I am a fruit bat, you realize."

I could feel him stick out his tongue, letting the soft chunk drop back to his plate. It did nothing to remove the lingering taste in my mouth that wanted to force my gag reflex and fill my lap with pink and purple butterflies, but I forced myself to maintain my composure. I pushed my fingers through my hair and placed my elbows on the desk. My claws settled against my lips together. "Never mind. Take me to the mill and show me where the refract pixies live. There ought to be a few of them left; Pixie World hasn't even been down for forty-five minutes. And with haste, darling."

Dame Cosmo wiped away her marks and began to write again. _Ship won't come in til later. Can it wait so I can_

"Now!" I snapped before she finished. "For Tarrow's sake, Sister, can you ever think of anything besides filthy robbery? Taking things we don't need is dishonorable and unbecoming of us."

Cosmo slipped a cube of cheese inside his mouth with the leftover taffy. I let that one slide. Our counterpart drew her white wand apparently from behind her head - knowing her, she must have wedged it in her wavy golden hair - and gave it a flick. With a _pop_ that I saw by the cloud of vapor rather than heard, we were off. Whiteness blurred my vision. I curled my toes in, realizing for perhaps the first time that I'd never shoved my shoes back on after training this morning. Well.

Dame Cosmo materialized on a faint rise, stuffing her wand back in her hair. As a general rule, the Refracted did not much like visitors, even when they were merchants with shipments to deliver. The Dame Head was one of few who controlled a cloudship port and allowed Deep Kingdom ships to dock there, no doubt because she liked and trusted the Primary Pixies rather a lot for obvious reasons. With their tan facial feathers, dark brown wings, and short purple hair instead of the normal palette of white and gold, the pixie refracts had never been quite in sync with the rest of Refracted society anyway.

I swallowed without tasting the saliva in my throat as Dame Cosmo took to her wings and flew a short ways around the rise. No honeywheat. Of course, it was Halloween. Harvest season had come and left us. A few black stubs remained here and there across the otherwise white world of rolling cloud vapor, and here was a scythe, and there was a stack of woven baskets, but mostly, the fields were empty.

The Dame Head stood staring down towards the pond, clutching the front of her pink robes with both fists. At Dame Cosmo's approach, she turned her head and fixed us with a dull stare. Tears had marked dark patches of feathers down her cheeks.

The entire valley was filled with golden fog.

Not fog, I realized a second later. Lifemist. A few straggling pixie refracts were on their hands and knees, beating their brown wings and seemingly gasping and choking as their magic pools drained away beneath them. So it was really true. The Pixie race was truly, effectively dead. Uncertain warm sickness that didn't taste a bit like butterflies gathered in the back of my throat.

"Cosmo, don't you dare barf on us."

I could practically see him lurching forward, squeezing his head with both hands, hiccoughing as his darling Wanda rushed to fawn over his every need. Unless he decided to play the other way, floating along with a happy face and not so much as a twitching eye to give away what was going on inside his brain. I'd known him to do that before, sitting and smiling as the shrieks and squeals of Anti-Fairies echoed around him through my ears.

"Sister Unseelie, I know this may not be the most sensitive subject to discuss at this time, but we need to ask the Dame Head if she knows anything about what happened. I need to know what so upset the Ancients. Sunnie thought it had originated in Pixie World… Does the Dame Head have any clues?"

Dame Cosmo appeared to relay this information to the Dame Head. She lifted her shoulders and wings in a shrug, let them drop, then motioned for Dame Cosmo to follow her into the nearby nesting building on its hill.

Inside, we first came across a hallway, then a single dining table, set with breakfast dishes of half-eaten meals. The white walls were sparse, the room majorly empty. A broken crystal ball lay in a splash of shattered shards on the floor. Beside it, Dame Sanderson hunkered against the wall with her arms folded around her ribs. I recognized her by the horn-rimmed glasses and the signature purple cowlicks. Well, that made sense. Pixie-Sanderson had been the oldest, and the firstborn always received the largest pool of magic of the lot. Of course she would last longer than the others as what was left of their magic began to drain.

The Dame Head took a small chalkboard from a hook on the wall and turned to Dame Cosmo again. Dame Sanderson flicked her eyes between the two, then lay her palms against the wall behind her and forced herself up to her feet. She must have realized there was a mind-meld in play, and that two drakes could see her on the other end of the line. Refracted damsels weren't supposed to sit in the presence of any male. Something about their avian instincts viewing height as a sign of dominance. I watched her silently, my fingers folded against my lips, as she made each aching movement to her feet. Her knees shook beneath her pink robes. They gave out, and she crashed back down to the floor.

Her blue tail flickered uselessly against the ground. With a weak hand, she made the attempt to tug the hem of her robes lower. She couldn't reach, and it seemed her spine was already stiffening up. She wore no shoes. No socks. I could see her exposed talons plainly. Clutching. Curling. Little pink things like worms in the dirt.

The Dame Head noticed the feeble movement at the same time Dame Cosmo did. She dropped down beside the smaller refract, reaching to take her head, but Dame Sanderson closed her eyes and dissolved into golden mist before they even touched.

Dame Cosmo blinked. I bowed my head.

The Dame Head tugged off her hat and leaned back against the wall. She wasn't looking so good herself, I couldn't help but notice. She had that thousand-cloudlength stare in her eyes reminiscent of the time the Head Pixie had been our prisoner of war, hunkered in the corner of his cell and clutching his shoulders as he struggled against the urge to engage in Rhoswen syndrome for the week after that… incident involved with his first attempted escape plan. The Dame Head looked like that. Despairing. Watchful. Hungry.

"Dame Cosmo," I prompted. "You have to ask her. The Blue Castle sanctuary has been targeted by the Ancients. I need to know all she's able to tell me about what may have set them off. I've heard her counterpart may have had something to do with it. Tell her that."

Dame Cosmo relayed this information. The Dame Head took a long piece of chalk between her talons and scrawled on her board before turning it around so Dame Cosmo could see.

 _I don't know. Came back to find them dying._

"Hmm. Has she heard from the Head Pixie as of late?"

Dame Cosmo relayed this too. To my surprise, the Dame Head turned very muddy brown in the face. She shook her head vehemently.

"Dame Head, I think you are lying. Did he say something to you? Sunnie thought the disaster that called the Ancients down from Plane 23 originated from Pixie World. What did H.P. do? Did he say?"

She wrote again on her chalkboard, and again turned it towards us when she was done: _I don't know anything._

"You are a mean liar."

Pause.

Slow markings.

Underline.

Hesitant turn.

 _We went Daoine._

I read the word three times through Dame Cosmo's eyes as the Dame Head averted her gaze. "You went what?" I finally asked. "Don't be absurd. The amount of power required to- You can't just 'go Daoine' on the inferior planes of existence! Only an Anti-Fairy can initiate the ultimate mind-meld, and _only_ on Plane 23. Your anti-pixie counterpart is locked away on Plane 4, imprisoned in the Lotus Palace dungeon and sealed behind the Isle gates. Firmly away from the heavenly world. You must be mistaken."

 _I'm not an idiot. I wouldn't tell you a lie you wouldn't believe. Truth._

On my side, I folded my arms and automatically arched my eyebrows. "Really. So after all your fairy tales and religious preaching about Fairykind Daoine forms _only_ being achieved in the afterlife, despite the actual texts and studies passed down from those long ago who performed experiments and claim otherwise, you and your counterparts _randomly_ got together and decided to attempt uniting into Daoine form today. Forgive me if I struggle to believe it. The Daoine form is said to be permanent, and you're clearly separate right now."

 _Please don't mention death or mock my beliefs._

I paused.

Daoist traditions insisted that death was the end-all-be-all of existence for Fairykind, a union between Fairy, Anti-Fairy, and Refract as one single being. It was considered the final stage of metamorphosis, after which it was said that one lived forever after in a perpetually blissful state, frozen in time, heavy and flightless, deprived of so many things that they had once held dear. Day after day for the rest of eternity. Perhaps H.P. could accept that boring state, but I was a believer in self-improvement and understanding the world. I believed in reincarnation, in returning to the world as a river or a spring to nourish nature as it had nourished me, because I was born in a Water year, because the nature spirits told us so.

As I understood it, the Daoine form was the path of the selfish and ambitious. It was the path taken by those who rejected the offer of the nature spirits to give to mortals, to live in harmony with the universe, and who instead demanded more. Wrath, gluttony, greed, envy, sloth, lust, pride- those were the components Daoine were made of; the Daoine Sìth existed, or so even the ancient texts belonging to my people admitted, but they were simply minor nature spirits of temptation and sin. The same ones we Anti-Fairies were always cleaning up after- unraveling the massive knots of bad luck they left in the energy field and dispersing them into smaller, less harmful bursts which we of course used up and dissolved immediately to clear the air. Filthy litterers- Oh, how I despised them.

I knew a part of Daoine lore that H.P. refused to acknowledge, no matter how much I pressed him. Daoine forms existed, and could be initiated by an Anti-Fairy who stood upon the sacred vapor of Plane 23, but it was a trap. A test. A lure. An inescapable vortex of promised powers with the price of madness irreversibly attached. The Daoine were demigods driven to insanity by their own ambition, and H.P. is right- just look to the effects of Rhoswen syndrome to prove it, the abuses and rapes that my people have suffered at Seelie hands. Good smoke, don't be daft. I'd kissed a Seelie Courter myself before, suffered the drawbacks of saliva exchanged across Courts, felt the burning desire to take things as far as Fairykind biology allowed, but _I'd_ kept myself in control without so much as a follow-up caress for a week. It isn't as though it's that hard. And yet, those court cases, every time…

An entire religion had been founded on the Daoine concept and turned it into something that seemed desirable, insisting upon immortality, peace, and coexistence in the afterlife without the faintest shred of proof to back their arguments up. Forgive me if I scoff whenever I hear that Anti-Fairies will be treated equally to Fairies once the lives we're living now and the discrimination we suffer on a constant basis are over.

All this passed through my head in a matter of seconds as I stared at the Dame Head through Dame Cosmo's eyes. Here she sat before me, insisting that she and her counterparts had gone Daoine and yet unraveled again. It was nonsensical, of course. Utter rubbish. Tomfoolery.

Wasn't it? Or was the Dame Head dying like her pixies were? Was this Dame Head whom I was seeing, who sat on the floor fanning her face with her pink hat and clutching her stick of chalk between her talons, merely the outer shell? With H.P. dead, was she dissolving from the inside out? Mentally uniting with her counterparts, melding minds and spirit, with only a final shred of her consciousness left to pilot her body until her final exhalation? Could it be true, that the Daoine were creatures of the afterlife after all?

It didn't make any blasted sense.

I sighed. Cosmo had returned to eating his meat, and I couldn't be bothered to snap at him again in a ceaseless cycle. Even if everything did smell of sugar, grease, old cheese, and bloodied body parts. "Suppose the three of you did go Daoine. Is that what upset the nature spirits?"

The Dame Head wrote three more words on her chalkboard: _I don't know._

"So, nothing. You can give me nothing. No part of this mind-meld was useful to me at all. Fine then. Both of you, I am breaking off the link. If you learn anything related to this pixie business, scry me immediately. I'm in my office. Do you have the contact information for my personal crystal ball?"

Dame Cosmo gave me a talons-up. Silence from Cosmo Prime.

"Put more cheese in your mouth if you understand what I said and you know how to contact me."

He did.

"Good. Use the personal ball, not the direct one. I have to keep that one clear should the Council need to get through. You are released."

With that, I waved my hand and let the meld slip away between my claws. My vision faded back to normal, though I could feel a drastic migraine threatening me below my temples. Sunnie sat at the end of my desk, holding his hand in the air beside one of my two crystal balls. As I watched, he made a sharp movement and knocked it onto the floor. It hit with a thunk and rolled across the carpet to the door that led into Venus' office. I raised my eyebrows. He watched with pricked ears, and as it kept going, he shifted his right eye so that he could look at me too.

"Anti-Cosmo," he said, his voice half a tint less level than normal. Without turning around, he slid his hand towards me. "I think that we should kiff-tie again."

I choked on my own saliva. "Right _now?_ "

"Well, yes. It's our best strategy. If you're killed while we're tied, we'll both reincarnate in my Temple." Finally he turned around. "When the Ancients do break in here, we'll want to have our escape route in place."

"Are you mad? We won't let them break into our sanctuary. And Inkblot City just went down with Pixie World, I imagine, if the Hocus Poconos arrived to feed. The Temple-" and my voice caught. "Oh my smoke. The Water Temple. It may be gone. Sunnie, this could be it for you. If you die, you won't reincarnate."

Sunnie curled his tail around the handle of my desk's highest drawer. "I told you. My Temple rebuilt itself in its original place in Faeheim. The echo chamber has reformed and looks just like it did before that gray _c_ _reep_ got all up in my personal space. I can see everything inside it."

I glanced beneath his tail, but the blue carpet in my office still looked like, well… carpet. No trace of mobile Plane 23 vapor at all. Apparently he was telling the truth, even if it still didn't make any sense (Since when had the Ancients ever bothered to move someone's Temple if they were going to murder the land it rested on?) But it certainly seemed that somewhere out there, his Temple was still standing. "Well," I said, trying to think of some way to dodge the offer without refusing directly, "we don't have your sacred dagger on hand, so kiff-tying is off the table anyway."

"This one?" Sunnie made a motion in empty space as though plucking an object from a high shelf. The long black knife, its hilt bejeweled with turquoise stones, materialized in a swirl of steam. He flicked it between his hands. "Here it is. Do you want anything else from my Temple? Someone left fruit snacks in one of my offering bowls. Do you like fruit snacks?"

"Sunnie!" I rolled my chair back from my desk until I hit the curtains and the wheels caught. "We can't drop everything and kiff-tie right now. This is a serious cloudland emergency! I wasted enough time fishing useless information out of the Head Pixie's refract. Where are the Ancients now anyway?"

"Coming close. He didn't veer towards Winni and Thurmondo at all. I suppose that's because all of us but Twis and Dayfry have peripheral manifestations and can't be reclaimed from our Temples. Dayfry's favor was lost eons ago, so he's in the clear unless-"

 **DAYFRY IS RECLAIMED**

The three words echoed around me and inside of me just as before, with Twis in the great hall. I looked at Sunnie, my mouth numb. "So the Darkness is still moving this way fast," I finally guessed. "If he's reached the Love Temple, he's entered the High South Region. He's almost here."

"The Hocus Poconos and the Reaper of Souls aren't far behind. We need an escape plan." Sunnie swung his tail over to the nearer side of my desk, his stare half-lidded. The black dagger moved vaguely towards a certain scarred point on the left side of my neck. I followed it with my eyes. Cold beads of sweat took form at the edges of my lips.

"Sunnie, I said no. We can't kiff-tie now when people are counting on us."

He frowned. "Anti-Cosmo, be reasonable about this. Realize that I am the Focus spirit. Won't you be less stressed once we're tied again? Less clumsy, if nothing else."

"Get that thing away from me, you smoky card!" I jerked my foot up and flipped the knife into the air. It spun, twice, then came down and landed hilt-first in my own hand. Thank Tarrow H.P. had taught me how to do that. Of course, I'd never seen him actually do it _right_ , but it certainly worked. I pointed the blade at Sunnie's face. He squinted. I said, "You're still wearing the bridle. You have no power over me. I was thinking I would remove it because you were being so good, but for a spirit intended to embody introspection, peace, and tranquility, you're certainly doing an excellent job of getting on my nerves."

Sunnie looked at me for another few seconds, then closed his eyes. His shoulders shook twice as he chuckled. Then, eyes lazily flickering open again, he placed his hands against my thighs and leaned his forehead into mine. His tail wrapped around my lower leg. "You're always so grumpy when we're apart. Admit it. You like tying with me. That's why you keep coming back, even when I play a little rough."

"Get off!"

"Don't you like the agility field bonus? Fewer stumbled steps, more careful balance, stronger legs, not getting stuck when flipped over like a little turtle on your back with your wings crushed beneath you? And I haven't even mentioned what your wife thinks of you in your agile state. Tongue and hands in all the right places, never so much as a fumble-"

"Prince Sunday." I leaned the back of my head against the metal bars of the window through the curtain. "Get. Off. Please."

He stared down at me, lips twitching towards a sneer around the bit in his mouth. But, he released me and drew back. His hand drifted up to his face, and he started pawing at the bridle. "All right. I'll ask again when the stakes are higher. It's the most logical strategy, and you'll realize that soon enough. Now, do you mind if I keep eating my offerings? Someone left a carton of milk in my C room dish, and it will spoil if I leave it there."

I rubbed my forehead and reached for my monocle in its black handkerchief. The dagger went on the table with a click. "Fine. But do try to stay on task."

Sunnie flicked up a watery eyebrow. "Focus spirit. Perfect split attention. I'm always on task. Would you like me to present you a list of every offering in my bowls? Maybe you'll find something that will calm you down."

"I don't need to be calm!" Using my wings, I pushed off the window and brought my chair back to my desk. "This is a high-stress situation that calls for immediate responses and actions. While the Robes are presumably busy maintaining order in Anti-Fairy World, I have to do enough worrying for all of us. Anxiety calms me down."

"These hard-to-get tactics-"

 **SATURN IS RECLAIMED**

We both glanced up at the ceiling, and then at each other. My mouth dried- a sensation I hadn't felt for quite a long time. Sunnie pointed at the connecting door that led into Venus's office, and indicated the great hall beyond that. "Didn't you… send Saturn and his medium out to do a perimeter check about twenty minutes ago?"

"Oh my gods." I pressed my hands over my mouth and rose to my feet. "Get me to the front door. Shift us. _Now_."

He continued to bob where he was, but his hands moved behind his back. He lowered his head. "Maybe I made a miscalculation."

"What? You?" I swept my eyes across my desk, checking to be sure everything was in order (Well, not in _order_ , but present). Monocle? On my face. Wand? In my sheath. Crystal balls? Oddly silent, the mists swirling inside them plain and white.

"Maybe the Ancients had no intention of damaging Pixie or Fairy World. Maybe they're hunting us down on purpose. The zodiac spirits." Sunnie turned his head. "The Water Temple stood in Pixie World until they got there. Were they looking for me? Would they leave you alone if I took off across the universe right now and didn't come back?"

I watched him, silently. "Do _you_ think they would leave me alone if you were to leave me now and not come back?"

Sunnie studied my face, then studied his tail. "I don't know. But I do know one thing."

"Oh?"

"I want to stay here. Kiff-tied or not, I want to stand by you until the dreary end."

My knuckles scraped against my desk. I unfastened his bridle and placed it on a squashed stack of scrolls. "Thank you. Now, we're running out of time. We need to-"

Despite the thick walls dividing us, I heard the great hall erupt in screams. My wife's, accented with a rolling holler, cut above the rest.

I didn't even wait for Sunnie's response. Nor did I rush back through the short hall and throw open the door. I shot straight there with a bursting _foop!_

"Anti-Wanda!" I screamed when I saw her. My _foop_ had been rushed and clumsy, especially without Sunnie there to unconsciously guide my movements, and I landed on my rear when I dropped in. That blasted woman- Scrambling up, I flew across the hall, grabbed her by the elbow, and yanked her away from the window. "I thought I told you to take the Abracatraz tunnel."

"I- Munn said- He said-" Venus craned her neck, staring past my shoulder. "Anti-Cozzie, look out!" she screeched, and tackled me to the floor. My wings twisted at awkward angles. An engulfing, sucking tube of red and black slurped between the bars above our heads. Thankfully, the children had the brains to press further in the far corners of the great hall with most of the camarilla and a few of the cooking staff who hadn't retreated to the kitchens. There were dozens of young juveniles sitting with the pups now, brought down from the upper roosting room. Good- at least now we could keep a solid eye on all of them. I fumbled for my monocle as the vortex continued to pull at empty space. Finally it gave up and withdrew.

"So those are-" I guessed, still hunkering beside her on the floor. I kept my wand gripped in my right fist, both my arms wrapped around Venus. My claws clutched the swirls of hair down her back.

"Eliminators," Anti-Poof confirmed. He sat nearby with his arms around his knees. "If you look outside, you won't be able to see the stars. The Darkness is here. We're trapped."

Venus hung her head. "I's sorry. I was too slow gettin' all the things ready. Then Munn said we coul'n't go out, or he'll see us. Have ya listened ta the hum of the energy field lately? It's all scrambled up from the reality shifts, and the Ancients are jist makin' it worse. Ain't no _poof_ ing out a' here neither when it's twisted in knots like that."

I bit my lip. "Perhaps it's better this way, my darling. If he's released the Eliminators, then sending you away from the Castle may not have been the wisest decision. You would have been unprotected. Better that you stay safe with me here."

Metal parts clicked and whirred outside. Sure, the children might have the brains to scoot back, but I, an unfortunate match of Sunnie's desire to gather the information necessary to assess this situation in full, released my grip on Venus in favor of peering between the bars of the window instead.

There were rows of enormous clockwork arachnids standing out there, eight legs and at least a hundred eyes each. Silver bodies glinted dimly in what little light could still be found outside with the stars concealed. I swallowed, but remained standing, my wings folding and unfolding as I studied their ranks. All the Eliminators out there were looking at me, and I could see for myself that they had green eyes. So where was the infamous Number 001, commander of the fleet?

The clicking and whirring came again. I twitched my ears. Something was definitely picking its way down the Castle wall. From the way it moved, I guessed it had eight legs and a spidery form just like the others. Sure enough, its small, round face appeared from above the window- at the same time Sunnie materialized behind me.

" _Yeep!_ " He darted back to join the kids. I sunk my claws into the mortar and remained where I was, even as my wings trembled and my legs nearly gave out. Red eyes glared back at me.

"This Castle and all who reside in it are protected," I said. "This is a sanctified building. Your mind-warping authority does not extend this far. Those are Da Rules."

The arachnid kept its upside-down head where it was as its legs moved down the wall beside the window. After it had repositioned its body on the ground in front of me, it twisted its head to match its new orientation. A few dozen of the eyes blinked at me, and then the others followed suit. Several mouthparts clicked together, then stopped.

THIS MATTER IS ABOVE THE DELEGATING ADMINISTRATIVE RULES OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE

THIS MATTER TRANSCENDS TIME AND SPACE

YOU HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO THE **ERROR DATA**

YOU ARE CORRUPTED

THIS FALLS WITHIN MY JURISDICTION

YOU WILL BE RECALIBRATED

My claws clenched deeper. "Ooh, I don't very much like that option. Would you be so kind as to offer me another?"

YOU WILL BE RECALIBRATED

"What is the error data?"

IT WAS **ERROR**

"Can you elaborate?"

YOU ARE CORRUPTED

THIS FALLS WITHIN MY JURISDICTION

YOU WILL BE RECALIBRATED

One of its legs lunged for me, straight through the bars that lined the window. It sunk into my thin left sleeve. I lurched back, and the fabric tore. When I glanced down, red blood rapidly swelled up where the cut had been made. I pressed my hand against it and scrambled backwards, bumping into Anti-Fairies and long benches as I went. 001 did not pursue, but blinked at me again. Then it latched onto the wall and clicked its way up towards the Castle roof. Its legs disappeared from the range of my hearing, try as I might to stare through the ceiling and listen for them. Outside, the row of green-eyed Eliminators began to swarm. Following suit, they crawled the walls, searching out any weak point in our defenses. Clicks, clacks, and whirrs echoed in what was otherwise squeezing silence.

"Don't worry," I called to the stunned Anti-Fairies around me, clenching my shoulder. "They can't get in. Tarrow's blood hallows this ground. We are thoroughly protected. It's going… to be… fine."

I dropped to my knees, hissing through my fangs. "Anti-Cosmo?" Anti-Wanda yelped, falling beside me. She pressed my hair back from my face and felt my forehead with her wide palm. Of course she would be checking for a fever when my arm was bleeding. Her voice squeaked. "What should I do? What should I do?"

"Don't panic, first and foremost." I leaned my head back against the bench behind me and closed my eyes. "They can't get in."

"Until the Hocus Poconos gets here in less than thirty minutes."

"Sunnie!"

"What?" As the children around him began to shift and mumble amongst themselves, the camarilla fighting to soothe their fears, he turned his head towards me. "Should I withhold valuable information? We need to pool our assets and knowledge so we can strategize."

"We need to not panic," I insisted as Anti-Scott, Anti-Kyler, and Anti-Scarlett examined my bleeding shoulder.

"I thought anxiety calmed you down."

"Devoting my focus towards solving problems calms me down, not-" I pinched my nose and squeezed my eyes shut. "Okay. Okay. From now on, if you have any information you want to add to our strategizing pool, do it with me in private. Not in front of young pups and juveniles."

Sunnie flicked over, flowing like a river down a tumbled heap of rocks. He sat down on the end of my bench, wrapped his tail around the table leg, and leaned back. "This situation won't go away if you ignore it. We don't have a lot of time before we're facing two Ancients instead of one."

I clenched my fangs as Anti-Kyler prodded my arm. The skin around the cut had rapidly gone numb. Inrita for sure. "Thank you, Sunnie, for not helping."

"Fine. I'm going to the observatory. When you want to strategize with me, seek me out there."

"Don't you dare." I reached up with my good arm and snatched the end of his tail as he snaked over my head. "First of all, you'd have to cross the courtyard to reach that area. It's not protected like the rest of the Castle, and the Eliminators might drop down on you. Secondly, we're certainly not splitting up while those things are loose. I refuse. Wait a minute." All of a sudden, I realized we were missing someone from the camarilla. "Where's Anti-Julian?"

… Oh. Right.

I met Anti-Wanda's gaze. She looked away, flattening her ears. Anti-Scarlett's grip tightened on my arm. I brought my knees to my chest.

No. Don't think about it. Just focus on who was left.

With a sigh, trying to ignore the pain in my paralyzed shoulder as the others finally released it, I lifted Venus into my lap and leaned my forehead against hers. I wrapped my arms around her torso and struggled to interlace my fingers. "I wish that you weren't trapped in this nasty situation, my dear. But since you are, I'm glad we're together."

"But…" She tilted her head. Her legs adjusted as she knelt around me, most of her weight pressed against the base of my stomach. Her fingers clenched my collar. "It's jist a reality shift mind-wipe, right? We's gone through those before when them kooky godkids gets all carried off with their own wily wishes. So's we just gotta let 'em make us funky, maybe swap our colors or switch up our wings 'til the li'l darling gets sick a' playin' and that Jorgen fella resets us back to normal. Worst case is, we gotta deal with the weirdness for a bit 'til the li'l tucker who wished it done grows up. We've done that sorta mind-wipey stuff before. Maybe we should just do what the spider loony says and let him rectiwhatsit us. I mean-" And she chuckled. Her head tipped to the side and the familiar shoulder popped up, her eyes squeezing shut. "It's not like we's a-gonna forget each other, right?"

I stared across the great hall even as I kissed her head. "You don't know that, sugarplum. There's no telling what that brute has planned for us." My arms tightened. Well, the one with active nerves still connected to my brain did, anyway. "Smoof it all. For the first time in recorded history, we haven't been granted our promised immunity and passed over without a fight. No matter how many rule-free muffins have been granted to godkids past, or how many times Cupid offers such things as a prize in his silly games, we've never been at the mercy of reality shifts before. We've never faced the Ancients' fury. Sugarplum, this one's serious. Whatever rule-free wish was made here affects us Anti-Fairies directly. Including us here in the Castle." I pressed my face into her hair. "We were targeted directly, and for whatever reason, the Ancients are ruling against us. I don't know who or how or what or why. All I know is, I'm not taking risks. I can't lose you."

"Hey." Venus placed her palm to my cheek. "I like how you said 'can't'. That means we ain't got nothin' to worry about, right?"

The image of the dying refract pixies crept into my mind. I couldn't forget Sunnie's dry comment about the Hocus Poconos feeding on their hosts. She had slain the young nature spirit who represented Pixie World. Admittedly Sprigganhame was a bundle of bitter sarcasm and absolute disrespect, prone to sticking out his tongue and making obscene gestures with his fists together and tilted in front of his chest as though he'd snapped a wand in half. But because of his bloodline as the son of Fairy World and Anti-Fairy World, he was still considered one of the Wise Ancients. He was still just a cub. Apparently, none of that mattered. The Hocus Poconos had slain the Pixies' home and the Pixie race. What could the Ancients possibly want from us, safe and meek inside our Castle walls?

"Hey," Venus said again, more suddenly this time than before. "We should get your arm fixed up 'fore it gets rotty."

I lifted my face from the soft curl at the front of her hair. "Oh, that's a simple matter, darling. We'll _poof_ over to the Breath Temple for a healing bath-"

… Right.

I held Venus in my lap. She held my hair, leaning her cheek against mine. Our fingers lay intertwined between our chests. In silence, we trailed our eyes around the great hall together. Munn had of course returned to Venus' ears. Sunnie still sat unhappily on the bench with his arms crossed. Most of the camarilla were assembled behind him, and Venus had followed through with my order to assemble as many as wanted to gather and watch the situation play out. In total, perhaps a hundred Anti-Fairies gathered around the edges of the great hall. The other two thirds must all either be roosting, or off engaged in their own things elsewhere in the Castle, content that we would be granted our due sanctuary and their High Count and Countess would sort everything out for them.

"Anti-Cozzie? So, do you got a plan? I mean, of course you gots a plan."

"We hold out," I said simply. "The Castle is protected. They can't get in."

Venus closed her eyes. Her lashes brushed my nose. "How much longer d'ya think it'll be until the Hocus Poconos gets here?"

"Don't worry," I repeated, more firmly this time. "We are protected. Now come on. Anti-Wanda, Anti-Kyler, help me to the kitchens and let's take a look at my numb arm. Red blood, I swear. The legs of the spiders' must have been forged of solidified inrita and qualify as kiff-tie knives. This cut burns like the dickens."

* * *

 **TO BE CONTINUED**

 **Part 3: Boss Stage**


	38. (128-3) This Is Halloween: Boss Stage

**128.3 This Is Halloween: Boss Stage** (SYSTEM ERROR)

 _Year of NO ERROR, Autumn of the LACK OF ERROR_

* * *

"How is it?" Anti-Kyler asked, dabbing the wet rag to my bad left shoulder again. It hadn't stopped bleeding. I shrugged with my right one instead.

"It burns and I can't move much of it. My fingers can still twitch, with effort. Don't concern yourself. It's by no means my first time being cut with a kiff-tie blade." Sunnie preparing to tie with me hurt far worse, but I couldn't just say that with him in the kitchen too. His head rested in my lap, he sulking into his crossed arms again with his tail twitching around me like a stream in a fierce wind. The flowing water that made up his hair soaked my uniform and left me wet and shivering.

Anti-Kyler grimaced. "I'm more worried about infection. There's no telling whether those clockwork spiders keep themselves clean. Bet you they crawl around in the dirt. Bet you that." The anti-brownie pulled back and soaked the bloodied rag in the sink again. I stared down at the wound on my arm, which still refused to close.

"I don't think it's going to stop," I told him. "Not until I next go to smoke. It's bleeding _red_ , and I'm quite certain that was inrita which dug into my skin. I may not be at risk for dying like a Fairy when I touch it, but the nasty stuff does disable everything magical it touches, and that includes the cells and blood in my arm that would normally heal it up."

I sat on the counter with my legs dangling. Anti-Kyler stood in front of me with the blood-stained rag. Venus washed a clean dish over and over with dull circles of her hand, the metal scrubber scraping and glistening like gold. We were quiet and alone in the kitchen together. The cooking staff had moved into the great hall to hear what all the commotion was, and bring out little frosted ginger cookies to brighten everyone's spirit.

There were three windows in the kitchen, and we had taken care to keep as far away from them as possible. The Eliminators swarmed over the Castle walls, and every few minutes, one would pause to peer in and attempt to reach us with one of the swirling vortexes they produced from their mouths. Venus had already strayed too close once, and only jerked back in time thanks to Munn granting her additional speed. Some of the clockwork arachnids had taken to clinging above the windows, watching and waiting, and two legs had made an instant stab for her when she was still safely on this side of the bars. Not that it seemed to bother them. Apparently, if they could reach between the bars without touching them or the walls, the ward that kept them out did not apply.

Apart from the clicking and whirring outside, everything was silent.

And then it wasn't. Venus made a choking noise in her throat. She flew forward and flung her arms around my neck, sobbing into my hair. Sunnie pulled away with a low, gurgling growl. I patted her back, but she ignored any and all soothing words with a vicious shake of her head. Oh, the poor dear! How much of this was beyond her understanding! I nudged her cheek with my hand, intending to kiss her and pretend I'd forgotten the chaotic world with all its thousand and one problems, when a _kiff_ and puff of warm steam behind her made me flinch.

"How's it going, team?"

I jumped. So did Sunnie and Anti-Kyler. I clutched Venus close, scrambling for my wand, as Anti-Kyler immediately hit the floor, his hands flying up to the jade circlet between his ears. Sunnie ducked behind me. The Grim Reaper floated in the air on his back, fishing out clumps of roasted valravn from a red and white bucket resting on his knee.

"Relax." He lifted his hand. "Not why I'm here. Also, if I was, fighting me would be pointless anyway. Unlike some Ancients, I actually do have a Temple in my name, so I can exist outside of Plane 23 _and_ reincarnate if I'm killed. My servants may not be as shiny and modern as Big D's Eliminators, but they do know how to do their jobs without me and do them well. Anyway, I've got a five-minute break before we need to start rounding up the refract pixies' souls, so I thought I'd check in. If we had cable on 23, you guys'd be on every channel. How's it going?"

Neither Venus nor I lowered our wands. "How did you get through our defenses?" I demanded.

"Uh." He pointed at his chest. "Reaper of Souls. My field bonus is barrier immunity. Me and my kiff-tie partners get free entry anywhere in the universe. That includes all Temples and Sanctuaries. Did you not know this?"

Before I could slap myself for asking such an obvious question, Anti-Kyler's jade circlet lit up bright green. Then it burst in a puff of petals. Instead of settling on the ground, they clustered together until they formed a freckle-faced naiad with wood-brown skin, spiked green hair, and a long, bird-like tail of autumn-colored leaves sweeping behind him. His mouth wasn't even whole before he shouted, "Daddy!"

Sunnie tightened his grip around my waist, staying firmly behind me. I grimaced. Venus took my hand.

"Hey, kiddo." The Reaper popped another piece of valravn in his mouth, then grabbed Thurmondo's wrists when he bounded across the kitchen. He flipped them over. "Still got the yellow cuffs and chains, I see. And some new bruises."

Thurmondo shrugged. "The bruises were accidents. The chains are for my own good. Being the Curiosity spirit causes problems for everyone around me. Sometimes I start wandering off and I have to be hauled back before I forget I have a job to do."

"Like this?" the Reaper asked patiently.

Thurmondo's face drained of color. "Oh. Y-yeah. I, um, I should go."

"Hey, while I've got you." The Reaper propped his elbows on the counter behind him, between sprinkled clumps of flour and dirty mixing bowls. "The big guy wants me to kiff-tie with him and override the Sanctuary's defenses. Do you want a little brother, or a little sister?"

"Oh, a sister!"

"That's not going to happen," I said, glaring at them both, "because as I understand it, you have an agenda of your own and you aren't willing to offer yourself as a tool to the Darkness, a plaything, a mere means to an end. You prefer true intimacy and passion, specifically with the Cycling Hen. As far as nature spirits go, you really aren't the type to kiff-tie casually. Am I mistaken?"

They both looked at me blankly. My cheeks and ears flared with cold. I tried to think of something else to say to defend my argument of why the Reaper shouldn't leave the Castle premises and make himself vulnerable to forcible kiff-tying. The silence was awkward and I wanted to break it. But, fortunately I didn't need to. Thurmondo's chains tugged lazily backwards into the empty space behind him. The color, which had just started coming back to his brown face, disappeared again. "Uh-oh. Winni wants me back. I gotta scootch. Good luck fighting the Ancients, guys. Give me the play-by-play later. Have fun!"

He allowed the chains to yank him backwards and disappeared with a _kiff,_ paying absolutely no attention to Anti-Kyler, who had only just gathered the strength to sit up. "Nice," he grunted. "It was hard holding his attention long enough to tie with him the first time. Now I'll never get him back."

I stared across the kitchen at the window on the eastern wall. "That might not be a concern for much longer."

"Oh? Is Hoco here too?" Before anyone could stop him, the Reaper brought his face to the bars and stuck his head right against the edge. "Watch out!" Venus shrieked. I slapped my hand over her mouth so if she did catch sight of the scene, it would be through her eyes instead of her sonar. Perhaps I ought to have covered her ears. The squish and tear of immortal flesh already haunted mine. Two razor-sharp arachnid legs plunged into the place I imagined was the Grim Reaper's forehead… if not something softer, like his eyes.

The Grim Reaper's shoulders stiffened as the reality of what had just happened sunk in around him. The pointed hood of his brown robes slipped backwards to reveal a shining white skull fixed atop a bare, bony spine. He lurched a single step sideways, long fingers sliding across the wall, and then dissolved into a column of hot white steam. 001 clung to the window's edge, its eyes glittering. I released Venus, and she fell to the floor with a gasp.

"No," I choked out as a shapeless black mass melted out of the shadows outside and rapidly took on solid form. Pure black skin. White suit. Glowing red eyes. Four arms. His upper right hand bore an amethyst ring, while the upper left wore a ruby bracelet. A brown belt with a citrine buckle wrapped around his waist. White teeth flashed as he clenched them in a grin.

I HAVE FOUND AN ACCEPTABLE KIFF-TIE PARTNER

YOUR DEFENSES WILL NOT STAND AGAINST THE UNION OF TWO OF THE WISE ANCIENTS

"No," I whispered again, clinging to Sunnie as he clung to me. Anti-Kyler held the twitching Venus on the floor.

PREPARE FOR RECALIBRATION

A flash of light went off around Venus' ears. Her earrings whisked into the air in a rush of wind and steam. "I've got this, guys!" Munn hollered. He hadn't even finished reforming before he launched what remained of himself straight through the Grim Reaper's wispy particles, and sent them both reforming and crashing across the kitchen. Tied and taken. They hit the cabinets on the opposite wall with an "Oof!" and lay still. The Darkness stared after them for a beat, then threw out all his arms and screeched.

!?

GO TO YOUR TEMPLE

HE WAS MINE

YOU ARE GROUNDED FROM YOUR PARTIES FOR AN EON, YOUNG MAN

"I'm okay," the Reaper wheezed, crumpled on the floor with his arms around his torso. He hadn't had the chance to replace his hood, and he lay there, eye sockets blank and staring and his jawbone dangling from the rest of his skull even when he spoke. "I have piercings in places I didn't think I could even have piercings, but I'm okay, guys."

Outside, the Darkness began to pace in a huff, kicking the occasional Eliminator out of his way and sending them sailing across the lumpy black clouds. A few of them fell between the break between them that made up the gaping Castle moat, and plunged down into empty space.

"Oh, thank gods. Specifically, Sky Year demigods." I released Sunnie and pressed my hands over my eyes. "He has no one to tie with. We've still got time. We've still got time."

"Uh… I'm not sure about that." Sunnie tugged my ear, then pointed through the window. I raised my head and twisted around to look, even though I didn't want to.

The Hocus Poconos hauled herself over the horizon, keeping near the forest. She looked to be comprised entirely of deep silver fog, though it ranged near black along some parts of her swollen underbelly, which scraped across the vapor each time she lurched forward. Each of her steps was lumbering, legs low and stout. Her eyes were positioned on the sides of her head, her face short and sharply curved into a beak. Watchful and ready to snap up anything that crossed before her eyes. A misty forest of evergreens sprouted like a shell along her back. Twin long, thin tails whipped through the air behind her.

Everything immediately around her was so gray, gray, gray, the colors bleeding slowly back as she left one area behind for another. Oh, the pixies would have loved her, had they met under better circumstances… or had those simple-minded fools been capable of comprehending nature spirits in their manifested, sentient forms as opposed to shapeless swirling vortexes of destruction and hate. Nature spirits were complex creatures. More than the base elements those neat freaks appeared to enjoy categorizing them into, sorting them like a child with a game of shaped blocks and holes.

The Darkness brightened. Metaphorically, at least. Abandoning the Castle, he turned into a small ball of black energy and shot like a comet in her direction.

I puffed my cheeks. "So that's-"

"My mom," Sunnie confirmed.

I glanced at him sideways. "I thought you were born of Tarrow's tears after she dumped him for that one photon spirit."

"In the interest of not losing my 'You get Mother's Day off' privileges, I am choosing not to answer that."

"Oh, so _now_ you withhold information."

"Because it doesn't contribute to our assets at this time." Sunnie braced his elbows against the window ledge, his body coiled along the counter, and sighed a stream of mist. "Well, here we are. Time is up. What do you want to do? Your defenses are cute, but they won't hold against two Wise Ancients with an agenda to fulfill."

Anti-Kyler and Venus stood behind me, awaiting my instructions. The Reaper sat in the corner, groping for the bucket of valravn he'd dropped when he'd gone to steam, even though it was on the opposite side of the kitchen and there was obviously no conceivable way he could reach it from where he was. I leaned my head back against the wall. "You really think they'll kiff-tie for this, Sunnie?"

"Out of necessity. They have a job to do."

"This sounds like a good time to mention that the rates I charge for babysitting newborn demigods have recently skyrocketed."

Sunnie stared at me. "Is this relevant information?"

"I was joking. Well, I wasn't, but…" I clenched my hair with my good hand, sick to my fagiggly gland and beyond as the Darkness flew in circles around the Hocus Poconos. She batted him off with a swat of her paw and continued lumbering towards us. "What's so important that _she's_ willing to land herself a new bundle of chaos?"

"They didn't come all this way just to fall short of their goals," Anti-Kyler pointed out.

Sunnie nodded. "If they must tie to unite their powers, so they shall. It's the most promising strategy for success."

I closed my eyes, trying very hard not to think of all the Anti-Fairies innocently eating cookies in the great hall. Hopefully, with the threat of Eliminators at the windows warning them back, none of them had actually looked outside and seen yet what was going on. "Well, I'm casting my vote that the baby will be a spirit of shadows. Darkness and Unreality would result in something like that, wouldn't they?"

"Hm."

We were quiet for a few seconds, just watching the Hocus Poconos drag her enormous self down the hill and listening to the Eliminators swarm in circles over the Castle walls. The Darkness trailed after her, seeming more than a little irritated that she was making him wait to tie. I fingered my left shoulder. Still bleeding. Still red.

"Anti-Cosmo, we should tie again ourselves."

I shot up. "Are you mad?"

Sunnie probed his tail against my foot. "It'll be quick. Then you can stab yourself or however you like dying best, and we'll reincarnate in my Temple back in Faeheim. That gives us more time to think up a plan."

I threw my arm back to indicate Anti-Kyler and Venus behind me. "I won't abandon my people, Sunnie!"

He put his head to one side. "We're no good to them here."

"That doesn't matter." I turned my eyes through the window again. "I would never forgive myself if I ran away when they were looking to me most. I'm their protector. And… What in blazes?"

"Huh?" Venus asked, pressing close, Anti-Kyler behind her. We stared in silence as the Darkness made another attempt to initiate a kiff-tie with the Hocus Poconos. Again, she batted him back, this time sending him spiraling down to the cinders and ashes. He skidded in the grit for about twenty wingspans. It took several seconds for him to recover. When he drew himself into the air again, he had two arms crossed and the other two hands braced against his waist. Loose shadows had begun to peel apart from his form. They waved in frustration around his stocky body until he pulled them in and smoothed his white suit down.

"She rejected him," I said incredulously. "Sunnie, Sunnie look!" I dragged on his sleeve, unable to tear my gaze from the scene outside. "She doesn't want to kiff-tie with him! I think that brainless brute wants to wait for another Ancient to appear before she takes on the Castle. We have a chance!"

Sunnie coughed into his fist and looked away. "That makes sense. Those two are hardly on the best of terms. It was a… messy break-up last time. The kid that had to deal with his father in that state has intimacy issues and low self-esteem."

"Who else is coming? Which Ancients are on their way?"

"I don't sense anyone." Sunnie looked over at the Reaper, whose hunger hadn't yet overpowered his laziness and who was now attempting to fish his valravn bucket towards him with his scythe. "Do you, Uncle?"

He laughed. "Are you kidding me? Let's think about who's left. Mother and Father have a fracturing universe to hold together. Prince Morn and Princess Eve still haven't come back from their honeymoon. My wife's brooding over our latest batch of eggs, I don't mind admitting. Hy-Brasil thinks he's on permanent vacation and none of this is his responsibility, and Tír Ildáthach isn't going to get up while she's still nursing Solis Infinitum. Sprigganhame is basically dead. Need I go on listing the rest? It's me, him, and her. We're the only Ancients who can afford to devote this much time and energy to disabling a Sanctuary. Thanks to their bindings, the zodiac spirits are useless for this job unless you've got all seven of them. Then there are the rogue spirits who normally steer clear of us, because they're lower down the hierarchy and kiff-tying gets increasingly unpleasant for them the farther they're removed from the inner godly circle. You know how it goes."

I pressed the fingertips on my left hand against my lips as a rising idea stirred in my chest. Then I slid off the counter and looked across the kitchen at the door on the eastern wall. It opened straight outside to allow groceries and deliveries to be brought in directly. "The Hocus Poconos is a mite slow in the head, but sooner or later, even she'll realize The Darkness is her only option. We've got to keep them distracted. If we can prevent them from kiff-tying, then everyone else will be safe. It's our only chance."

"Anti-Cosmo," Sunnie yelped as I pulled him after me, "you're insane!" He skidded to a halt in midair somehow, backpedaling with the free arm. It took a slap of his tail across my face, but he managed to push me off. Then he withdrew, clutching his hand to his chest. "I'm not going out there. I'm not risking being reclaimed. You shouldn't play around with gods."

"Anti-Cozzie!" Venus grabbed my hand. "You can't!"

I looked between them and the door. Then I took Venus by the shoulder and looked her in the eyes. "Darling, I have to do something. I don't want to go down trembling like a coward, praying to gods who don't appear interested in coming to our rescue."

Venus stared at me. Slowly, she shook her head. "I- I don't understand. You said we was protected. You said you coul'n't lose me. You promised we was gonna be fine."

"Yes. You will be."

"But what about you?"

"Don't try anything," Sunnie warned, floating another pace backwards. "You can't keep them occupied forever. You will lose, and they'll unite anyway and use their combined powers to obliterate the Castle's defenses. Anti-Cosmo, if you fight them, you won't win. We should run away. We'll flee to my Temple, and then take off across the universe while we have a head start. That's a good strategy. It keeps us out of danger the longest."

"Your arm," Anti-Kyler said meekly. "The Eliminators."

I tilted my head. "I don't hear them clicking about anymore. I imagine they withdrew when the Darkness pulled away."

"Do it," said the Reaper through a mouthful of valravn. "I've got a front row seat and I want to see some serious chaos go down."

Sunnie swished in front of me, barring my way to the door. He threw his arms out to either side, much like the Darkness had done. "I repeat: _Don't do it._ My duty is to suggest the course of action with the lowest amount of risk. I am the strategist of the gods."

I placed my hands to my hips. "Well, you certainly do a sucky job of it, don't you?"

"Excuse me?"

"Sunnie, whether you like it or not, the Castle has become a battlefield. I don't need strategies about how to stay alive by avoiding the most crucial battle. I need strategies of how to win the war."

He withdrew his arms and allowed me to push past him. "Anti-Cosmo, I'm not a warrior. You're asking me to comprehend algorithms I have no point of reference for for. Water isn't an aggressive thing. Water survives. Water offers life and safety."

"Good." I put my hand on the door handle and glanced back at him. I forced myself to smile. "Look after the others for me. Especially Anti-Wanda."

" _No!_ " She threw herself forward, but Anti-Kyler caught her by the hand and pulled her towards him for a hug. She stomped on his foot and pounded her fists against his back, but he took her blows in stride and squeezed his eyes shut. His wings shook.

I opened the door.

"Are you doing this?" the Reaper asked, a note of excitement tingling in his voice. He set the red and white bucket aside and tapped the sapphire piercing somehow embedded in the upper lip of his skull. "I'm going to want to get up for this."

Sunnie turned a full circle, his lip curled and his head tipped back towards the ceiling. Then he lashed his tail and zipped after me. The door fell shut behind him. We hovered together outside the kitchen, his hands resting on either side of my neck. No Eliminators struck out at me. I didn't see the slightest hint of green eyes or whirring metal parts. A battle of wills raged across the way. The Darkness and the Hocus Poconos had turned their full attention on each other instead of us. His frantic wooing still did not appear to be serving him well, judging by her shrieks and swiping claws. Every time he approached, she forced him to spiral away and reevaluate the situation, his four arms laced behind his head and his face twisted with impatient irritation.

"On second thought," Sunnie said, sinking behind my shoulders, "Maybe we should give them some privacy. It's probably past my bedtime anyway. I take naps."

"Come on," I said, yanking him forward by the hand. "Cover my back. Watch for Eliminators. I need to get across the moat to him. We need to split up. Split his attention. He's not a Focus spirit like you. He can only pursue one of us at a time."

"But- What if he reclaims me? If I lose this peripheral manifestation, what's to stop him from flying back to my Temple and finishing me off?"

"The fact that your Temple is way out of his way and he didn't backtrack for Winni and Thurmondo, I hope." I rolled my eyes. "Don't you see? He picked up the other zodiac spirits because they happened to be in his path, and he wanted a backup plan in case he needed to fall back on your powers to disable the Temple. Of course, he needs all seven of you to do that. Much simpler to kiff-tie with the Hocus Poconos. While she's here, I don't think we need to worry he'll continue gathering the set."

Another loud blow sent the Darkness crashing into a tree. It, and he, fell down together. He picked himself up, and looked our way. He stared. Then he rose, wispy, arms dangling, and drifted in our direction. Slowly first, then faster and faster. He drew a golden knife from a sheath at his hip.

"Oh me, he's coming." Sunnie slammed his forehead into mine. "He wants me! Kiff-tie, now! We've got to get out of here. I can strangle you from the inside. It'll be quick."

"Get. _Off._ " I threw him back, beating my wings. My core thumped in my forehead. The Darkness was approaching. Only Sunnie and open space separated him from me now. My hands shook, my feet trembled, but I blamed that on natural klutziness making a reappearance now that I was no longer drawing upon Sunnie's agility field bonus as I had back when we were tied. "Sunnie, we have to split up and distract him. It's the only way we're going to pull this off."

Sunnie shoved his fingers through his watery hair. The tips began to bubble and steam. "But _I'm_ the one he'll chase. That's suicide! At least with you I have a chance. Splitting up reduces my survival rate by-"

 _"Sunnie!"_

The golden knife sliced down his back before I could grab his hand and jerk him away. The instant the two came in contact, Sunnie evaporated. _Clack, clack_ went his turquoise brooch against the ground. It bounced to a stop at the Ancient nature spirit's feet. It would have been funny, really, that he had all this power in the universe, and yet he bent down to pick it up. But it wasn't funny. Behind me, Venus screamed, though the sound was muffled. Anti-Kyler must have clapped his hand over her mouth and pulled her back.

 **SUNNIE IS RECLAIMED**

Those words echoed everywhere around me, ringing across the universe, though the next ones were softer and more locally based.

YOUR IMMEDIATE PROTECTION AS A MEDIUM IS NULLED

YOU WILL BE RECALIBRATED

"Oh gods." I stepped back towards the Castle, covering my mouth with both hands.

Oh gods indeed. I watched the Darkness fit the brooch into place against his breast with the hand that bore Saturn's ruby bracelet. Then my eyes trailed to Dayfry's ring, allegedly lost so many eons ago. He saw me looking.

THE LESSER SPIRITS CANNOT CONCEAL THEMSELVES FROM ME

NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY WOULD PREFER TO

In the middle of his second sentence, I whipped out my wand and blasted him between the eyes with an electric beam of blue. The Darkness reeled back with a snap of his wings, then fixed his eyes on me again. My wand smoldered at its tip

YOU THINK TO STRIKE A GOD OF CREATION?

"I…" I clutched my limp arm, my tongue folded up against the backs of my fangs. My wings clung to my sides like a newborn's. I lowered my gaze automatically, but I did not kneel. I wouldn't. Fear and fury raced throughout my veins. Who was he, to go back on the sworn promise that my Castle was protected, that my people were safe? _Who was he_ to hurt them when he had vowed not to lift a claw against us?

I PROCEED WITH RECALIBRATION

His mouth opened, and a thin tunnel of red snaked out. The air began to spin. Pulling me forward.

Not today. I whipped around, shoved my wand between the bars of the nearest kitchen window, and grabbed it with my other hand. That took heaving, the limb paralyzed near the shoulder, but still movable in a few places near the wrist and fingers. Held lengthwise, my wand formed a handle which I clung to with all my limited physical strength. Venus grabbed my knuckles. Anti-Kyler grabbed hers. The Reaper watched curiously in the background.

My ears flew back. My legs lifted from the cinders. I bent my head and clenched my teeth as the Darkness sucked in the ashes and the rocks around me. He clamped a cold hand around my calf.

LET GO

"Never!" I kicked against the vortex pulling my legs backwards. My tears were going with them, and my eyelids were tugging in that direction too. "Darkness or not, you can't touch my Castle! It's mine! _It's mine!_ "

The hand dropped away with a snap like an electric spark. The Darkness sighed. The force of its tug actually slackened just a bit.

I IDENTIFY AS REALITY

YOU ARE INTERFERING WITH THE STABILITY OF THE UNIVERSE

YOU WILL BE **ELIMINATED**

"… Reality?"

By this point, the Darkness had succeeded in sucking up most of the cinders and pebbles in the area, so there wasn't much left between he and me but the Castle he couldn't touch. Scraggly bushes rustled, branches cracking, as their roots began to give. No nightbirds called. The wind didn't shriek. The Hocus Poconos waited on the hill, preening her misty forest as she watched us, but making no move to contribute to the proceedings. It was almost silent as I clung to my wand through the window bars, though my mind was pumping with every trace of energy it had left. One look at Venus' and Anti-Kyler's stunned faces suggested they were thinking the same thing I was.

The Darkness stopped pulling at me. I let go of my wand at the same time. It clattered to the kitchen counter, only to be immediately plucked up by the remains of the vortex and absorbed by the Darkness' mouth. Venus' fingers slipped from my hands. I crashed down to tender white cloud and spun around to face the Darkness again. If I could even still call him that knowing what - or who - he was.

"Nature spirit," I choked out. "Spirit of reality!" My jaw hit my knees. I clapped my hand over my mouth once again, this time sinking my claws into flesh until I felt it bleed. "Oh my smoke. _Tarrow?!_ "

 **I IDENTIFY AS REALITY**

He fizzed as he spoke, his shape changing. Now that I knew his name, and that he and the Darkness weren't separate beings as I had always been told, my mind comprehended him in the form I'd been taught to imagine him as since my days as a pup. His shadowy feet, gently kicking in the air as he maintained his balance, snapped into curling tentacles. They were as thin as my fingers, but longer from his body to their tips than the Castle turrets were tall. I realized this as his coils snaked across the hills, wrapping around trees like a fist around a toothpick. Thousands of them curled into the distance. At least a hundred thousand thin, twisting coils, each one connecting him to Fairykind throughout the universe. I glanced down at my own chest. One of Tarrow's tentacles lay as close to my feet as he was able to reach, but his influence did not extend to me so long as I remained in contact with the Castle wall.

He loomed over me, his body pulsing, glowing, the same dark red as the sky, and he swirled with traces of black steam and clouds, because he was the sky, and he was the ground, and he was everywhere. Hundreds of large arachnids, their eyes glowing green, scuttled about inside his depths. They bounced and rolled every time he shifted too fast. And in there too, I could count four swirling vortexes of colored light and steam, zinging back and forth, shedding stars and traces of their various elements behind them and occasionally bumping into each other. The reclaimed zodiac spirits in their projected forms; apparently, the lining of Tarrow's bell cancelled out the effects of the aura each one produced which usually allowed me to behold them in shapes of my own interpretation, though the true forms they'd been born as remained tucked away in their hearts.

There was no doubt about it. I cowered in the presence of the cosmic jellyfish himself.

"Tarrow, what happened to you?" I scrambled back to my feet, grabbing the bars behind me with both fists. Venus' fingers clamped around my hands again, her claws digging into my skin. When Tarrow leaned his body down, the vapor of Plane 23 swept towards me like ocean waves across a beach. It curled around my feet even as I drew my legs up near my stomach, fighting to float even with so little space to beat my wings. My chest heaved. "You're Tarrow the Luck-Twister. You're the deity of fate! You're supposed to be on our side. How did you become this- this- destructive monster?"

A tree split apart as his tentacles cinched around it. Instead of falling to the ground, it went up in bright red steam.

I DO NOT IDENTIFY AS TARROW

I IDENTIFY AS REALITY

I WAS BORN OF METAPHYSICAL TIME AND THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF NATURE

I TURNED BACK AND CREATED THEM OF SMOKE AND DUST AND VAPOR

I CREATED EXISTENCE

I AM REALITY

RELEASE YOUR HOLD ON THE BLUE SANCTUARY

YOU ARE TRYING MY PATIENCE

My fingers squeezed around the bars. A bead of blood trickled against the corner of my mouth. I resisted the urge to flick out my tongue and lap it up. Instead, I clung there, heaving air and the grit that had caught in my throat and attempting not to heave purple butterflies.

RELEASE YOUR HOLD ON THE BLUE SANCTUARY

I shook my head faster than I'd ever shaken it before. "This ground is consecrated. You can't touch me. Not without kiff-tying with a powerful nature spirit. A-and the Seven don't count as long as they remain bound to their Temples, or you wear all seven of their favors. You can't touch me."

…

IF YOU WILL NOT LET GO SO YOU CAN BE RECALIBRATED

I WILL MAKE YOU LET GO BY FORCING REGENERATION

Tarrow plunged a single tentacle into the middle of his bell and groped around. Eliminators and nature spirits scrambled out of the way. After a moment, he drew out an enormous black dagger, like a sword, embedded with an onyx the size of a small house where the blade met the hilt. My core dropped down to my throat. "Oh, gods. Is that your kiff-tie knife? That's… that's going to hurt quite a lot, isn't it?"

RELEASE THE SANCTUARY OR I WILL FORCE REGENERATION

"I…" I glanced back at my clenched fingers. Venus and Anti-Kyler stared at me, frozen in terror and shock.

RELEASE THE SANCTUARY OR I WILL FORCE REGENERATION

RELEASE THE SANCTUARY OR I WILL FORCE REGENERATION

ACCEPT RECALIBRATION

COME WILLINGLY

OR I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO KIFF-TIE WITH YOU TO PREVENT YOU FROM RE-ESTABLISHING CONTACT WITH THE SANCTUARY WALLS

YOU ARE MORTAL

BONDING WITH AN ANCIENT IS ABOVE YOUR MIND'S ABILITY TO COMPREHEND

BEST-CASE SCENARIO RESULTS IN YOUR SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION

Best case.

Okay. Okay. I inhaled, and then, lifting my chin, I stated, "Sorry, but I don't kiff-tie on the first encounter. I'm not that fast."

Tarrow's bell swelled up. Multiple trees and rocks crushed by the grip of his tentacles dissolved into steam with a series of snapping _kiff_ , _kiff_ , _kiff_ s all around me. Inside of him, the arachnids and the nature spirits whizzed about as his color darkened. As he hefted his sword, he let out a snarl from a mouth somewhere I couldn't see.

DO NOT MOCK THE KIFF-TIE WITH YOUR SUGGESTIVE WORDPLAY

YOUR FALLEN ANCESTORS STOLE OUR INTIMATE POWER FROM WE TRUE IMMORTALS

YOU ABUSED ITS SACREDNESS FOR SECULAR RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES

MORTALS ARE TO BOND WITH IMMORTALS

NOT TO OTHER IMPURE MORTALS

YOU DISGUST ME

The sword plunged towards my head like a lightning bolt.

"That's not fair!" I cried, jerking my entire body to the right. He was aiming for my left side. The blade clashed against the bars of the window. Venus and Anti-Kyler fell back, or the Reaper jerked them back, or something. Tarrow wrenched away to shake out his tentacle; apparently, the hallowed aura of the castle had done its job and scorched his being. His sacred knife - sword - thing - plunged to the white vapor between us with a clatter. My fingers burned from holding the bars so long and tight, but I didn't dare let go. Words swelled and choked in my throat, and I shook my head and let them spill like acid from my tongue. "We Anti-Fairies are creatures of balance. That's how you made us. We're always attracted to those who balance us most at the time. _You made us this way!_ "

Tarrow withdrew his injured tentacle. As I stared, it dissolved in steam, only to sprout anew just a few seconds later.

I OFFERED YOU A PATTERN AND STRUCTURE

I HAD GRAND IDEAS BEFORE YOUR ANCESTORS INSULTED DAYFRY

THE UNSEELIE COURT WERE CAST DOWN FROM PLANE 23

YOU ANTI-FAIRIES ARE SMOKE

YOU ARE SHADOWS

YOU ARE HUSKS OF WHAT YOU COULD HAVE BEEN

IF YOU FEEL EMPTY THEN THAT IS THE PUNISHMENT YOU DESERVE

"Billions of millennia!" I screamed at the top of my voice, and my eardrums almost split. My fingers relaxed - they had to - but I kept them near the bars anyway. My feet touched again on the ground. "Our sacrifices! Our ceremonies! Battles fought for your honor! People killed in your name! _Did you even care?_ "

YOU CANNOT RECLAIM THE FAVOR OF THE GODS AS EASILY AS YOU BETRAYED OUR TRUST

I didn't sob. It seemed like I should have, but the tears didn't come. Not like the froth creeping into the acid in my mouth. "What _are_ we to you, Tarrow? Playthings? Lower than playthings?"

I IDENTIFY AS REALITY

"If you don't really care about us, why have I spent thousands of years bowing my head and gritting my teeth and doing my duty in satisfying Sunnie for _no blitzing reason?_ "

He lowered his tentacle to retrieve his sword. One of the vortexes inside him - the one that looked like a hurricane spraying water - pressed against his side as though straining to reach me. Tarrow leveled his blade vaguely at my throat.

MY CHILDREN ARE DUMB AS STICKS

I NEEDED BABYSITTERS

I DEMANDED JUSTICE FOR YOUR CRIMES

YOUR ANCESTORS WERE DESPERATE TO WIN MY MERCY

COMPROMISE WAS REACHED

IT WAS A MATCH MADE ON PLANE 23

Every bitter comment I could have made dribbled down my chin in the form of boiling acid. I stared at him, with the tears running, and said nothing. He tilted his head and moved towards my neck with the sword again. Slowly this time. I said nothing.

RELEASE THE SANCTUARY OR I WILL SMITE YOU AND FORCE REGENERATION

"Nay!"

"Julius!" Venus screamed. Her claws fumbled towards me, but it was taking all my attention to keep my bad hand clenched around the window's bars, and I couldn't reach back for her.

"Venus," I spat instead, "get out of there. Comfort the others in the hall. I'm sure they can hear this." And I didn't want her to have to watch.

"I ain't leaving you!"

"They need a leader, woman! Our people need their High Countess! Get to the tunnel! Get to Vegon. Find them some place of refuge. I know you can do it. You're brilliant."

"Nuh-uh! I'm gonna tell the camarilla that we got Tarrow out here. They'll think of some way to stop him. We'll go down fightin'!"

I knew Tarrow could hear us, but I didn't really care. A lump had closed over my throat. Perhaps the threat of the Wind Wand would keep him from pursuing. He regarded me steadily as I heard the slap of Venus' and Anti-Kyler's shoes on the kitchen floor. I prayed that they left as I'd instructed. Though who I prayed to, I wasn't sure.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION NOTWITHSTANDING, KIFF-TYING WITH GODS IS A PRIVILEGE YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR

IT WOULD BE A NOBLE WAY TO END YOUR EXISTENCE

MORTAL KIFF-TYING WITH MORTAL IS MOCKERY BEFORE US

MOCKERY IS YOUR TRADITION?

"Mockery!" My finger flew forward before I could stop myself, jabbing at the blue hurricane in his bell. "If anyone here should be charged with mocking your sacred rituals, it's Sunnie. I say, that whiny tortoise is hardly respectful and reserved when it comes to kiff-tying with me. Time and time again, he's used it merely as an opportunity to pleasure himself!"

…

THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE MOCKERY OF THE KIFF-TIE

I WAS NOT AWARE OF THIS

THIS OCCURS IN THE ECHO CHAMBER OF THE WATER TEMPLE?

"Anywhere you can't see it," I whispered, lowering my hand. "And he's not the only one. Reality, my children- the Breath year- I don't want them to ever have to… Look here, Winni is notorious for…"

DO NOT BE CONCERNED

AFTER RECALIBRATION, YOU WILL HAVE NO CHIL…

…

I REALIZE THAT IS IRRELEVANT TO YOUR POINT

I WILL SPEAK WITH MY SONS FOLLOWING MAIN FILE RECALIBRATION

YOU WISH I SHOULD PUNISH SUNNIE?

I blinked. For an instant, my mind flashed back to seeing Tarrow in his manifested Darkness form, terrifying and revenge-seeking. He hovered patiently above the ground, one of his four arms extended but the sword-like knife pointing down, his mouth closed. The lapels of his white suit ruffled in a mystic breeze that affected only him. Ready to absorb and conquer. Sunnie's brooch gleamed against his neck like a sliver of ice.

"I…" I pressed my hand to the place where that same brooch had once rested against my chest and clenched my eyes shut. "I'm not above revenge. He's been mistreating me for millennia. But it wasn't like I could just refuse him. I'm High Count. The people expected… I had to…"

SELECT YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR SUNNIE

I WILL HONOR YOUR PUNISHMENT

SO LONG AS THIS DOES NOT INTERFERE WITH THE MAIN DATA FILE OF REALITY

He eased back into his Tarrow form, tentacles racing like roots across the landscape. I swallowed, but otherwise didn't move, for about ten seconds. Then I shook my head. "There are more pertinent matters that should be discussed now. What can you tell me of the fall of the Pixie race? What role does H.P. play in this mess?"

I had to keep him talking. Venus, Anti-Poof, and the rest of the camarilla would either get everyone to safety, or think up some way to defeat him using the new information that he was our sacred deity, our beloved Tarrow. They'd think of something. All they needed was time.

As Tarrow rubbed the blade of his sword with two tentacles, it was looking more and more like a little bit of time was the only thing I had left to offer them.

THERE WAS ERROR

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DETAILS

THERE WAS A JOB TO DO

I HAD TO PRIORITIZE

The sword went up.

"You didn't even ask?" I croaked.

The sword went down.

…

I VISITED THE SHRINE OF MY MOTHER AND FATHER

THERE WERE TRACES OF THIS HEAD PIXIE PRESENT

I REQUESTED INFORMATION ABOUT THE ERROR DATA I HAD FOUND

 **MOTHER NATURE** AND **FATHER TIME** MADE A MISCALCULATION

IT WAS STUPID AND AVOIDABLE

I SCOLDED MOTHER AND FATHER FOR THEIR RECKLESSNESS

MOTHER AND FATHER CALLED ME ERROR

WE… WERE… IN DISPUTE ABOUT THEIR USAGE OF THE TERM

THEY SHOULD NOT REFER TO ME AS ERROR

I CREATED THEM

"Wait." I threw one of my hands above my head. "The Head Pixie, the firstborn of his parents, was in a shrine when all this reality-shifting business was about to go down… and Mother Nature and Father Time knew it? You can't be serious. Which shrine was this? Tarrow, _which shrine?"_

I WAS ON PLANE 23 AS I COMMUNICATED WITH MY MOTHER AND FATHER

I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE THE SHRINE IN QUESTION

I DID NOT VIEW IT THROUGH MORTAL EYES

IT PROBABLY LOOKED VERY NICE

"Oh my gods." And I let go of the Castle and crashed down to my knees. My good hand hit my mouth. "Oh my gods. He _didn't_."

…

THE HEAD PIXIE WAS A BIGGER BABY ABOUT THIS THAN YOU WERE

IF YOU WANTED TO KNOW

AND HE HAD A VERY FOUL MOUTH

THOUGH HE WENT DOWN IN HYSTERIC LAUGHTER IN THE END

I FAILED TO FIND HUMOR IN THE SITUATION

HE SEEMED TO REALIZE THE TORTURES THAT AWAITED HIM FOR PROMPTING **ERROR DATA** TO ENTER THE MAIN DATA FILE OF REALITY

RECALIBRATION WAS FUNNY TO HIM

…

YOU ARE UPSET

…

UM

…

YOU WISH I SHOULD PUNISH SUNNIE?

"Tarrow, that is _not_ my biggest concern right now!" I slammed my fist into the ground, but gave up and grabbed my hair instead. "Ohh, those stupid pixies are so stubborn about sharing their feelings. Why didn't he _tell_ me if he was struggling? I would have been there for him! He didn't have to do this… not the shrine in Patio World… H.P., old boy."

SUNNIE WILL BE PUNISHED AS I SEE FIT

ANTI-COSMO WILL NOW BE RECALIBRATED

I bit into my knuckles, even though it drew blood. "Oh my gods, oh my gods, this cannot be happening. This is fake. This is a joke. This is a Halloween joke."

…

WHY ARE YOU CRYING?

I AM CORRECTING ERROR

I AM IMPROVING THE UNIVERSE

My forehead came down, touching the warm vapor of Plane 23 he'd brought along with him. "Am I just an error to you?" I asked.

Tarrow stilled his bobbing and swaying. My voice was hardly speech, and more of a cracking whisper, but he seemed to hear it anyway. A ripple passed along his tentacles. He released several of the trees and curled them inward.

YOU ARE NOT ERROR

ONLY YOUR REALITY IS ERROR

I raised my head. "But _you're_ Reality to me. By your own logic, you are 'error'."

 **I AM NOT ERROR**

Tarrow's striking tentacle came up so hard and fast, it hit me in the chest before my eyes even registered it. I flew back into the Castle wall, slapped and stunned. In fact, I hit the wall and then the ground before I even registered what had happened at all. From my crumpled place, my shaky upward stare informed me of a red stain against the Castle wall. Was it from my bleeding shoulder? Or had a tear opened down my back? I rolled to my stomach and tried to lift my wings, only to find them burning alive. Was I on fire? To think! Me, a Water year.

To some degree I was aware of what felt like broken bones and internal bleeding, and Tarrow hissing with irritation at having touched someone who was touching the Castle. I lay limp, quiet, burning, I think in shock about it all. Of course I was an Anti-Fairy, and generally speaking, in the majority of cases, even killing an Anti-Fairy wasn't a permanent way to dispose of them. I'd regenerate… almost as good as new… if I could just finish the job.

Tarrow watched in silence as I pressed my good hand against the cinderstone that formed the Castle and used the chinks between them to heave myself up. When I did so, I physically felt the blood and magic drop to my feet in a rush. My stomach flipped. I couldn't feel my bad arm at all. Had Tarrow's contact with me splintered my nerves? Had he destroyed my veins? Was that possible? Was I even alive anymore? Was I nothing but a physical container of flesh that carried a volume of blood now weighing down my feet and hands?

Tarrow stared down at me, holding his smoldering tentacle above my head. I squinted, trying to focus on him, but he made me dizzy. My head throbbed. My legs shook, and my wings burned. I knew they were still burning, because I felt a faint heat on my back, even though I no longer felt the pain. In Tarrow's presence, I didn't feel much of anything. I gave up trying to look at him, and with a moan dropped my gaze to the Plane 23 vapor twisting warm and wet around my ankles.

RELEASE THE SANCTUARY OR I WILL FORCE REGENERATION

RELEASE THE SANCTUARY OR I WILL FORCE REGENERATION

RELEASE THE SANCTUARY OR I WILL FORCE REGENERATION

I looked down at my feet for a moment more. I was at the point now where I was physically breathing, automatically trying to inhale unnecessary air through my mouth. My shoulders heaved. I stared at the steam lapping at my bare feet. Then I looked up again. "Do I dare ask why you brought Plane 23 down with you to my level? Here I am. Look at me. An Anti-Fairy, standing on Plane 23. Oh, dear me. Whatever shall I do now?"

!

DO NOT BOTHER ATTEMPTING THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF MIND-MELD

YOUR ACTION WOULD BE POINTLESS

I HAVE WITNESSED YOUR KIND PULL THE SAME TRICK BEFORE

I KNOW THE WEAKNESSES OF YOUR MELDED FORM

I nodded softly at his words. The flames engulfing my wings finished with the membranes and began to tear apart the bones, dissolving them into steam. In slow motion, I lifted my good arm above my head. I'd have liked to use both, but just the one would have to do.

YOUR ACTION WOULD BE IRREVERSIBLE

"I accept that."

Tarrow fumed with a visible fizzle. His tentacles twisted in front of me and all around. He turned as though to stare up the hill at the Hocus Poconos. Like any other animal, she had become bored and promptly fallen asleep on the hill. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought Tarrow was about to call for help, even from a barely-sentient Ancient like her. A deity call for help! What an idea!

THE MIND-MELD IS THE ANTI-FAIRY GIFT

YOUR PARTNERS AGREE TO THIS?

I choked out a laugh. "Since when did I care for their consent? It's either you, or us."

…

I WILL COME OUT VICTORIOUS

"Oh, I don't do this for victory." I stood there, keeping as much of my body in contact with the Castle as possible while maintaining my poise. Legs spread apart on Plane 23, bare feet pressed against bare vapor. My thin toes wobbled as they fought to hold me up. Thin white toes that blended in with the cloud. "Gods, I'm not stupid. I know full-well that I'm challenging a nature god. But I swore to defend my people. And I will not break my oath. You have endangered my people, and as their guardian, I will embrace the warrior path."

Tarrow picked himself up and withdrew a bob backwards. His form flickered. For an instant, the cosmic jellyfish turned into a tall man with a young face, like a little boy's. He floated in the air, one leg straight towards the ground and the other slightly bent. He had a tattered red cape billowing about him like a mass of tentacles, faceted crystal-like skin as black and purple-blue as distant galaxies in the night sky, short white hair that glittered pink and yellow like starlight, along with a rounded muzzle, tufted ears, and a bright pink nose.

He looked identical to Sunnie's true form, although with scarlet eyes and much, much shorter hair. That of course made sense, Sunnie having no other parent to draw genetics from, after all. His features were a perfect blend of Mother Nature's and Father Time's manifested forms as I knew them from the annual Bake-Offs and ancient texts. Tarrow had his father's stocky build. The four arms, he'd inherited from his mother, though instead of cradling a season in each palm, he clutched different objects. One was his onyx-encrusted sword. The others were an upturned silver goblet and a ball of multicolored yarn. The upper right hand was disembodied- white in color, with a triangular shard of crystal embedded in the back of it and glowing bright. On one of that hand's fingers, he bore Dayfry's amethyst ring. Saturn's ruby bracelet dangled from another wrist, one that was actually attached to an arm. Sunnie's turquoise brooch appeared to hold his cape shut at the neck. Twis's citrine buckle, brown belt and all, clung around his waist, where his golden knife rested in its hilt. He was still missing Munn's sapphire earrings, of course, so blue they were nearly black. Those, I would not let him have. They belonged on Venus' ears. Not his.

Tarrow held his hands close to a pulsing red object on the left side of his chest, his eyes enormous as he stared at me. Then he swelled up, shedding his natural form for the jellyfish projection again.

THAT IS NOT YOUR WAY

ANTI-FAIRIES ARE CREATURES OF INTELLIGENCE

VIOLENT ACTIONS ARE OF FAIRY NATURE

YOU ARE NO WARRIOR

I watched him bob backwards again, pulling in his tentacles and kneading them against the vapor. "Then this should be an easy fight for you, shouldn't it?"

…

YOUR VICTORY WILL NOT BRING THE PIXIE RACE BACK

IT WILL NOT PREVENT THE RECALIBRATION OF YOUR FAMILY

THE SANCTUARY WILL FALL BEFORE ME EVENTUALLY

THIS IS REALITY

I kept my hand above my head. "When I took my place as High Count, I swore to defend my people. I swore to eliminate error. I shall not go back on my word now."

…

YOU CANNOT BEAT ME

I AM TIME AND SPACE

I AM EXISTENTIAL

I CREATED THIS UNIVERSE

I CREATED REALITY

YOU ARE MORTAL

YOU WILL NOT WIN

He flickered into his true form again, this time with his feet on the ground, and took another step back. Two hands still defended the pulsing heart on his body, but now two others were on his mouth. His eyes shot back and forth.

"I think I ought to try," I said. The blood had drained from my arm. My back had begun to itch horribly. It was probably on fire. "You certainly look nervous for an all-powerful creature without any weaknesses."

I AM… TESTING YOU

I paused. "Tarrow, did it hurt?"

I IDENTIFY AS REALITY

His mouth moved as he spoke, his two red eyes fixed on mine and blinking rapidly.

I AM A NATURE SPIRIT AND INCAPABLE OF ATTAINING INJURY WITHOUT BEING KIFF-TIED TO A MORTAL MEDIUM

WHAT IS MEANT BY, "DID IT HURT?"

"When you fell from Plane 23?"

Oh, Venus would have cracked up beyond belief. She'd have fallen around my shoulders, squeezing my neck while I grinned and went in for my kiss while her lips were parted.

My darling wasn't laughing now. Neither was I.

"No," I whispered. "It didn't. Because you never left. You're still up there, existing on your level, bringing a piece of Plane 23 with you wherever you go when you cross into the lower planes. Bloody smoke, it's so obvious. That's why you have to carry your sacred kiff-tie blade everywhere you go. You have no Temple."

I… AM IGNORING YOU

I AM LOSING PATIENCE

I bent my head, smiling, even as my back blistered with warm, wet steam. "You have no Temple. That means you do have a weakness."

CEASE LYING TO THE GODS

"Need I elaborate to prove my thought process? Very well. Without a Temple consecrated with noble red blood, you can't reincarnate. The cosmic jellyfish is painted in our sacred mural, but out of what I always thought was respect, he has never been given so much as a carved statue in his honor. The reason why isn't respect… is it?"

THESE ARE LIES

I HAVE MONUMENTS IN MY HONOR

I GAIN POWER FROM THEM

I HAVE A TEMPLE

"Oh? Where is this Temple?"

…

IT HAS A LOCATION

I WILL NOT REVEAL IT

CEASE APPROACHING

CEASE APPROACHING

I took a few steps forward and stopped, my right arm still raised high and the left dangling. Our gazes locked. I cocked my right eyebrow. Tarrow had his two upper arms wrapped around his head now, the lower two around his torso. He'd started to shake. The red blotch on his left side pumped and glowed.

DO NOT ENGAGE ME

I WILL CONFRONT YOU WITH FULL POWER

"I'm willing to take that risk."

THIS IS INSANITY

I'M ONLY DOING MY JOB

I MUST MAINTAIN THE STABILITY OF THE UNIVERSE

I AM REALITY

I AM CONSTANCE, FAITH, AND TRUST

YOU WOULD DESTROY ME TO DEFEND YOUR PRIDE?

"Oh, not my stubborn pride, old boy." Not that he was looking like much of an 'old' boy at the moment. The more nervous Tarrow got, the more his form regressed around him, younger and younger until his tattered cape was three times his height, and he bundled it around him like a security blanket and continued to tremble. "I do this out of honor for my people."

…

YOUR HAT DOES NOT FLOAT HIGH ABOVE YOUR HEAD

YOU HAVE THE LEAST LIFT AMONG YOUR COUNTERPARTS

I DOUBT YOU EVEN GET THREE CENTIMETERS OF LIFT

YOUR SHARE OF THE COSMOS MAGIC POOL IS ONE OF DREGS

YOU WOULD DO THIS KNOWING WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR HOLD ON YOUR ULTIMATE FORM?

YOU WOULD END YOUR LUCID EXISTENCE TO DELAY RECALIBRATION?

My eye twitched. Oh gods, that was it. I clenched my upraised hand to a fist.

"Never, _ever_ mock my lift. I know precisely what I'm doing, and I accept my fate. I won't go down without a fight, and if I have to turn myself over to Fairy-Cosmo, then so be it."

Tarrow released his grip on his cape and dropped to his knees, his four hands folded and upraised. His words spilled out like rapid shadows falling during a solar eclipse.

DO NOT ATTEMPT THE ULTIMATE MIND-MELD

I KNOW YOUR WEAKNESSES

FIGHTING IS POINTLESS

I AM REALITY

MELDING WILL ONLY MAKE IT MORE FRUSTRATING TO RECALIBRATE YOU

IT WILL BE MANAGED EVEN THOUGH ADDITIONAL WORK DISPLEASES ME

I squeezed my eyes shut to keep my vision from blurring. The burning sensation on my back had spread down to my legs. They wouldn't hold me up much longer in this state, so it was fortunate then that they wouldn't have to. "Oh, this is very un-Zodii. If I'm allowed a final wish, don't let H.P. ever find out what I've done. Good smoke, Fergusi will lord it over Cosmos for the rest of eternity. That pointy-hatted freak always had to be right about everything. Bloody Darkness, this is so unfair."

DO NOT ATTEMPT THE ULTIMATE MIND-MELD

DO NOT ATTEMPT THE ULTIMATE MIND-MELD

DO NOT ATTEMPT THE ULTIMATE-

I brought my bare right palm slamming on the vapor, my entire body stretched forward, thin toes burning, and squeezed my eyes shut. "I accept the second death! Mockery of mockeries, let mortal tie with mortals before the god of gods!"

 _FOOP!_

 _POOF!_

 _POP!_

…

It ended with smoke. First it was black, then it was green, and I was not yet dead.

 _Kiff_ , went the hiss of steam between my teeth.

Gravity was the first thing I became aware of. My toes gave way and I dropped to my knees, and even my good arm struggled to hold me up for those first few seconds of my new existence. Good-bye, head full of helium. Hello, new flightless life spent walking on the ground.

Then I cracked open my eyes. All six of them. I mean, not that I really needed them for seeing, heh. That would be silly. I could sense Tarrow perfectly fine even with the lids shut. He was back on his feet, clutching all four of his hands over the pulsing red spot on his chest. His shoulders twitched like a creepy clown on a fishing boat. I processed him in an instant, then took another instant to process myself.

I tasted cheese. As Cosmo, I'd turned to steam with my mouth still full of it, because it was really good and I'd been at the cheese festival in Fairy World, and did I mention it was really good, because it was. Yellow cheese, white cheese, nacho cheese. Goopy strings of it clung between my teeth.

I'd become green. And black. In a checkerboard pattern, every part of me, like some kind of joke about me having just the one monocle back when I was Anti-Cosmo. Hand one color, fingers the other. Mirrored on the opposite side of the body. Four of my hands ended with small yellow claws. The same yellow that tipped my curled tail in a thick fluff. Two rounded ears not much different than the old set. I had (ahem!) rather large breasts only half-covered by an open vest not unlike the one I'd always seen Sunnie in, or the ones pretty common throughout Genie culture. Ooh, I think it was the same white as my old shirt, and trimmed with the elegant navy blue of my old morning coat. Good times. Good times.

My shoulder wasn't bleeding anymore. My arm had healed and strengthened up. It didn't even hurt. The only wings on my back were insect ones. Two pairs sweeping out like a dragonfly's, and by far the biggest set I'd ever moulted into. Still not big enough to let my heavy body fly, but they were certainly impressive. Apparently, it didn't matter if they'd dissolved into steam before. Tiny feathers ranging between turquoise and seafoam green clung like real goopy peanut butter to the backs of my legs. Was that pink cloth, the same color as my old dress, the infamous after-death skirt of Daoist myth? Sure looked more like underwear to me. Ha ha. I could see my underwear.

That would be fixed; this unflattering and totally clashing outfit appeared to be my default dress, but I'd find something cooler and more deliciously form-fitting sometime when I had a mite less to be freaking out about.

The green and black checkered creature who was me used two hands to rub his eyes, two more to hug his torso, and two more to push himself back on his heels. Scientific evidence suggested that our ancient Aos Sí ancestors had wielded enormous tridents back in the day they roamed the (Heh) cosmos, but unfortunately I didn't have anything like that, and it wasn't like I could just make one out of thin air.

Could I?

Tarrow's black body had gone absolutely red as he flushed. His teeth curled back.

OH

MY

PARTICLES

HOW **DARE** YOU DISOBEY ME?

YOU ARE MORTAL AND DEFIANT

YOU WILL NOT BE RECALIBRATED

YOU WILL BE **ELIMINATED**

MY OBJECTIVE IS TO **ELIMINATE** **COSMOS**

 **ELIMINATE** **COSMOS**

 **ELIMINATE** **COSMOS**

 **I AM REALITY**

I AM **PAST** AND **FUTURE**

I AM **FATE** AND **DESTINY**

I AM **THE ADAPTER** AND **THE SWALLOWER OF WORLDS**

I AM **THE CREATOR** AND **THE DESTROYER**

I AM **THE** **YELLOWNESS** AND **THE** **DARKNESS**

I AM **WHAT ENDS** AND **WHAT BEGINS**

I MADE YOU

 **BUT I CAN UNMAKE YOU**

"Not yet, you old goose! Taste a gander at this, and a gosling too!" I flung out all six hands, my head bowed, all my attention focused on gathering an enormous magical beam in the middle of every palm.

Nothing happened. I withdrew two sets of my arms. "Um…"

Tarrow stared at me, and then folded his four arms in satisfaction. He closed his eyes, and his shoulders made the same double shake that Sunnie's did whenever he found my old mortal self amusing.

YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO HAVE DONE YOUR RESEARCH

YOU ARE NOT AOS SÍ WITH POWERFUL MAGIC IN YOUR BLOOD

YOU ARE DAOINE SÍTH

DAOINE SÍTH DO NOT POSSESS MAGICAL CAPABILITIES

YOU CAN NEITHER STRIKE ME FROM AFAR NOR _KIFF_ AWAY NOR FLY

YOU SEEM TO HAVE MADE AN ERROR

YOU ARE NOT ABOVE MAKING ERRORS

I SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN CONCERNED ABOUT YOU

I stared down at my hands for a couple of seconds. "No magic. Eeeeyep, I always knew this was a stupid religion. I say, I'm reeeal glad I never joined. Oh well. I'll just do the other thing. It's cooler anyway, and it took a whole lot of set up, so I really hope you appreciate how much work I put into doing this."

YOU TRY MY PATIENCE

YOU ARE NOTHING BEFORE ME

YOU WILL BE EASILY BEATEN

Tarrow began to reconstruct his cosmic self. Maybe he wasn't good at fighting in his boyish, lynx-like manifestation. I dug my heels into the curls of smoke. "Hey, don't just go breaking my heart and ignoring me, you ruffian! I think you need reminding that the Daoine form is a type of nature spirit. And as a nature spirit, I can claim a Temple. Which I did."

…

YOU HAVE NO TEMPLE

WHERE WOULD YOU EVEN OBTAIN A TEMPLE?

I arched my eyebrows. "You mean, this building behind me that you have conveniently consecrated with my mortal red blood? I am a noble, you know, and I was mortal when you smeared it against the wall. Then, as an immortal, I accepted the consecration. It counts." I held his eyes. "Wow, it's too bad for you that you forgot I can pull anything out of my Temple and into my possession that I want. I've heard it's really neato."

With a _kiff_ , the golden bridle from my office appeared in my lowest set of hands.

!?

YOU WOULD NOT USE THAT AGAINST ME

Tarrow retracted to his true, small form again and pushed his fingers through his white hair.

ATTEMPTING TO STEAL MY POWERS-

THAT-

THE CONSEQUENCES ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

"No smoof. This thing must be worth a freakin' fortune, and I gotta waste it on harnessing you?" I laughed. "Boy, I sure hope you don't take it away from me. Because I'm a nature spirit now, so I'm susceptible to the bridle's effects too!"

My mouth fell open the instant I said it. Tarrow and I looked at each other. Then at the bridle, and at each other again.

"And that," I muttered to myself, "was Fairy-Cosmo's intelligence coming out. Oh well."

YOU ARE A NATURE SPIRIT

YOU ARE AN IMMORTAL

YOU HAVE A TEMPLE

BUT YOUR CENTRAL MANIFESTATION IS NOT CHAINED TO IT

THEREFORE YOU ARE AN ACCEPTABLE KIFF-TIE PARTNER

I WILL USE YOU TO MANUALLY DISABLE THE SANCTUARY'S DEFENSES

"… Oh, smoof." I grabbed for the bars of the Sanctuary window behind me, but hot metal seared my palms. I jerked them down to the window ledge, only for the bricks to cut into my flesh. I had to let them go. Apparently, Temple or not, it would still burn me unless I passed through the front door while kiff-tied and cozy with some cute guy. Yeah, that figures. I didn't even want to know what would happen if I reincarnated inside of it, or which room inside was considered the echo chamber. Probably the great hall, or maybe the observatory, or the High Count's office. But what if it was like, the make-a-deposit room?

Tarrow flung out one of his arms, and a twisting mass of glowing red light uncoiled like tentacles from his palm and rushed towards me. His eyes blazed. His cape billowed behind him, his golden-white hair flowing in imaginary wind.

 _Oh, better think fast, Cosmos, old chap. H.P. must have mentioned something. Okay, so if the Daoine are stripped of magic, then what abilities_ do _they have?_

I thought up the thought in an instant and acted. When Tarrow's tendrils shot out, I sprang into the air and they missed me entirely. Instead, they hit the Sanctuary wall behind me. He shrieked. I came down over on the left, clenching the golden bridle with three hands. I stared at him for like a second, my ears twitching. Okay, that was too easy. And he prrrobably wasn't gonna make that mistake again, so I had to get creative fast. Hmm.

Tarrow's weak point was obviously his heart. Funny- he made no effort to shield it with armor in any way, or even the fabric of his suit. Maybe that was against Da Nature Spirit Rules or something. Rule Number 5: You gotta have a huge giant weak spot on you if you wanna be god of reality. No, wait. That wouldn't be Rule Number 5. More like Rule Number 1 or Number 2 or-

"Yikes!" I sprang backwards as another mass of light tentacles slammed to the ground right in front of me. I ducked, jumped, then dodged to the left, then to the right. That wasn't very smart, I guess, because it put the Sanctuary at my back and all, but thank some uncrazy deity who wasn't trying to kill me that as Dame Cosmo, I'd actually been quite nimble on my feet… as opposed to a certain clumsier aspect of myself who'd leeched the gift of balance off another nature spirit he was kiff-tied with.

Tarrow was turning into a jellyfish again. His head kinda swelled up, and that wasn't good, because after all, his weak point only showed when he was in his weaker form. I'd already hurt his feelings when I yelled at him, and he was getting more angry than scared now. Maybe I could scare him with a new trick. So what scares a god?

 _He doesn't know what I am. I'm unpredictable. He doesn't know my powers. Do I get cool powers? H.P. never really mentioned that, but I_ am _a nature spirit. That much I've proven. So what's my mastery? What part of nature do I get to claim? There's gotta be something. I'm magic. There can't just be nothing._

Tarrow was sure rebuilding slowly. I guess I really hurt him when I forced him out of his cosmic form. He was a freak of nature: Half boy! Half jellyfish! I jumped to dodge a pair of tentacles that clashed together like clapping hands. I flipped forward in the air, releasing the bridle with my lower hands and catching it in my upper ones as I came around. Arms raised, I brought it towards Tarrow's head. His eyes widened. He pulled backwards, legs bent and floating in front of him. I slammed chest-first in the ground.

STOP THIS NONSENSE

I AM REALITY

I rolled to the side as Tarrow drove a column of jabbing tentacles into the vapor where I'd just been. Puffs of white steam shot into the air. I dove forward and spun back up to my feet. My wings buzzed uselessly against my back. Well, Cosmo's speed, Anti-Cosmo's tactics, and Dame Cosmo's agility were fun, and cool, but I couldn't just dodge forever, even if I did feel light on my feet and immune to soreness and pain. And tiredness and hunger and thirstiness and sickness and going to the bathroom and-

 _"Hey!_ Jelly boy! Leave my husband and my not-husband and not-wife alone!"

I froze. Tarrow didn't. He slapped me with his tentacle, knocking me sideways. My two lower sets of arms flew out to stop my fall. He'd become full jellyfish again, with no sign of that weak point on his chest. While Tarrow pressed his tendril against my throat, I sensed Anti-Wanda standing outside the open kitchen door, with the Grim Reaper peeping over her head. Anti-Kyler stood with them, shrugging at me as if to say, "Look, I tried my best, but this was her idea."

Anti-Wanda hefted a fat piece of steel wool above her head. Only, it wasn't steel wool, so much as…

She _wouldn't._

"I'd listen up if I was you, jellyman! 'Cuz if you don't, I'm gonna wash your jellyfish right off our magic mural with mah golden dish scrubber sponge. And unless I got taught wrong, it's your _only_ special jellyfish."

Tarrow faltered. It was just enough time for me to grab his tentacle and sink my teeth into it. Tarrow snapped his attention back to me, but he fell into his weaker form again as he did. I grabbed his forearm with four hands and flung him into the air. He flew straight up, struggling for balance, his cape snapping and billowing. As he came down, I flipped over backwards and caught him with my foot to send him flying directly into the Sanctuary wall. He crashed hard and fell to the ground with a screech. Blue snaps of electricity raced across his body.

I completed the backflip and landed on my feet. My tufted tail slapped down after me. The golden bridle gleamed in my hand. I looked at Tarrow, weak and vulnerable, for two thirds of a second.

But the last third won out.

"Anti-Wanda," I hollered. Abandoning Tarrow where he lay twitching and sparking on the ground, snarling and furious, I shot back along the castle wall. She yelped when she saw me coming and crossed her arms in front of her face to defend herself, but I snatched her up by the shoulders and shook her back and forth. "Hey, weeeird! I thought I told you to stay inside, cutiepie. He can't get you if you stay inside."

"But I can help!" Anti-Wanda kicked and struggled against me. I didn't miss the fact that she'd taken off her shoes; Plane 23's vapor licked much too close for comfort. She slapped my chest with the damp sponge. "Anti-Cozzie, you's got a whole castle filled with Anti-Fairies. If we was all ta go Daoine, we could fight him. He's scared of you- I saw!"

I grimaced and didn't put her back down. "My name is Cosmos now, and I can't let you do that."

"Why not?"

"Because- I was intimate with you once." I didn't have to glance over my shoulder to sense Tarrow gradually drawing himself together again. The bridle dangled from my sixth hand. I squinted down at Anti-Wanda's crooked, jutting teeth and slightly crossed eyes. "Though frankly, I don't understand why. I can't even. You're stringy and unbalanced, and I'm pretty sure you're even dumber than me. I like them with a little less swirl in the curl. Gods, whatever did I see in you?"

Anti-Wanda blinked up at me. She blinked again. Then she looked away. "I- I dunno, and I don't really care right now. Do stuff now, talk later. Cosmos, jist let me help ya. Especially if you don't care what happens to me. I can help."

"I… can't let you." My fur and feathers prickled. Tarrow was on his hands and knees. His projected form flickered around him. I might have just blown my last chance to fight him in his weakened state. I replaced Anti-Wanda on the ground, carefully away from all traces of Plane 23. Then I squished her cheeks between two palms and forced her attention back on me. "I used to make love to you. The longer I look at you, the more sure I am that that wasn't something I did lightly. Apparently, you're special. I can't risk you."

She clutched one of my center arms, her legs shaking. The golden scrubber almost slipped from her claws. "But if my husband's done up and gone Daoine, what am I s'posed to do now?"

"Why, what you've always done, of course. Be a High Countess the people can look to for a source of strength. Nurture and defend your children."

Anti-Wanda wrapped her fingers around mine, feeling for a wedding band on any of my right hands that she wasn't going to find. "They's _our_ kids, Cosmos."

I closed all six of my eyes. "They're Anti-Cosmo's kids. As far as you're concerned, Anti-Cosmo has been recalibrated." I lifted the bridle. "Now, step back through that kitchen door, and stay there. I have a job to finish."

"But-"

"Just! Go!" I shoved her through the doorway. My hands passed through the barrier. Every pain receptor in my fingers fired at the same time, blistering like I'd fallen onto a sun the size of a galaxy. I yanked my hands back, plunging my poor yellow claws into my mouth.

Oh, gods. They burned. Why had I done that, knowing how the Sanctuary would scald me? And for Anti-Wanda, of all Fairykind?

What a waste.

When I faced Tarrow again, he was seething. Mostly jellyfish, he still knelt on the ground instead of floated.

I TIRE OF PLAYING THIS GAME

I CANNOT AFFORD TO LET MY SACRED MURAL BE DAMAGED

WE END THIS NOW

A coil of red snaked out of a low point on his bell-shaped body. It widened into a funnel, deep and black inside. My ears and wings ruffled forward. My fur bushed around my neck. Tarrow rose, stiff as though sore. He sort of limped when he floated. With every slithering heave he made towards me, I took one back. Or I tried to. Due to that haunting vortex dragging me in, and the sizzling aura of the Sanctuary behind me warding me off, I wasn't exactly going anywhere. Anti-Wanda and Anti-Kyler clung to one another's hands, with the Grim Reaper snacking on valravn behind them. The vortex dragged like a straw at the bottom of a glass. The red and white bucket flew out of the kitchen, along with cooking utensils, clouds of flour, and Anti-Wanda's scrubber. They disappeared inside Tarrow's absorbing maw. I could sense his body shifting, studying the things he was picking up, adapting to them.

And still he kept coming. I lifted the bridle, and _still_ he _kept coming_. That was another good question: How was I supposed to fit a bridle over the head of a being with a whirlwind in place of a mouth?

 _Come on, come on. Power! Now! Nature spirit things, go!_

I tried to focus myself deep. The only thing I became aware of was the warm, melted taste of goop in my mouth. In fact, I was aware of all of its proteins and enzymes- caseins, rennets, the process of curdling, on and on down the line.

 _You have to be kidding me. I'm the demigod of cheese? Score!_

Cheese. I knew everything about it, and maybe that could be useful if I mastered its stickiness and used it as a rope, but I didn't have the slightest idea how to summon it the way Sunnie summoned snow and rain. Were there any songs about cheese?

I ground my teeth. My heels skidded in the thin steam. Plane 23 lapped like ocean waves around my ankles, yanking at my fur. I clenched the bridle tighter. The edges of Tarrow's sucking funnel lapped at my hands, but instead of pulling me into it, Tarrow just used it to keep me in place. It shrunk as he came closer, never losing its ability to keep me from bolting off. He held his sword raised near his left shoulder, as though he hoped to swing it to the right hard and fast. Ever one for encouraging violence, Anti-Wanda shouted, "Kick his fat jelly butt, sweetie!"

I guarded the kitchen door with nothing but the bridle, my lowest arms spread for balance, my middle set spread to either side like my wings. My teeth chattered. "I can't kick this guy's butt," I choked out as Tarrow _kept_ _coming._ "I can't run. I can't fight. I can't harness him when he's got a huge jellyfish face. You're joking." Then I blinked. "Oh, I get it. This is all one big surprise party for me. Coool! I mean, it's gotta be a joke, because there's no way I'm going down just standing here like an idiot with my last thought being, 'I'm the demigod of cheese'."

Tarrow flicked his sword and sliced me across the middle. It passed straight through my blood and bones, severed me, and burned my skin into steam. Anti-Wanda screamed. I looked down. Then up. I shifted the bridle to my other hand. I blinked. Then I let go.

"It doesn't hurt…"

My knees crumpled to the vapor. I wrapped all six arms around my body, gasping, as I squeezed my eyelids shut.

And that was it.

All that stupid set-up.

All that stupid tension.

All that stupid potential.

And I went down in one. Stupid. Blow.

 _Kiff!_

* * *

I HAVE FOUND AN ACCEPTABLE KIFF-TIE PARTNER

MY DARLING **HOCUS POCONOS** IS PREPARED TO JOIN ME

THE BLUE SANCTUARY WILL FALL AT OUR FEET

 **COSMOS** WILL BE RECALIBRATED WHEN I TIRE OF HIM

…

THE BLUE SANCTUARY'S DEFENSES HAVE BEEN NULLED

I SEE THE **REAPER** FINALLY DECIDED TO SHOW UP

I WILL DISREGARD HIM AND **PRINCE MONDAY**

NOW TO DEAL WITH THAT PINK-EYED PEST

ANTI-KYLER HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

?!

 **PUT THAT GOLDEN WASHCLOTH DOWN, WOMAN**

DO NOT TOUCH IT TO THE SACRED MURAL

IN ERASING ME YOU WILL WIPE ALL THAT REMAINS OF YOUR HUSBAND FROM EXISTENCE

…

VENUS, DARLING, DON'T YOU RECOGNIZE ME?

WOULD YOU PREFER I DROPPED THIS SILLY PROJECTION AND RETURNED TO MY TRUE FORM?

MY TRUE FORM LOOKS SMALL AND BLUE LIKE THIS, DOESN'T IT?

YES, YOU RECOGNIZE ME

THROW THAT GOLDEN CLOTH OUT THE WINDOW AND I WILL RETURN TO YOU

 **DO NOT TOUCH YOUR GOLD TO THE SACRED MURAL**

THROW THAT GOLDEN CLOTH OUT THE WINDOW

OR I WILL **ELIMINATE COSMOS** THIS INSTANT

I AM ALREADY WITHIN THESE WALLS

I HARDLY HAVE NEED OF HIM ANYMORE

…

GOOD GIRL

SUCH A WEAK CREATURE TO BE SWAYED BY SUCH EMOTIONS AS LOVE AND LUST AND LOSS

YOU POOR FOOL

NOW COME AND TAKE THE PUPPET'S HAND

SEE HOW HE EVEN BEHAVES LIKE YOUR OLD ANTI-COSMO?

HE HAS PLEASANT MANNERISMS AND HE SAYS "PIP PIP" AND "TALLY HO"

IS THIS FORM TO YOUR LIKING?

DO YOU NOT FIND ME ATTRACTIVE?

 **OW!**

HOW **DARE** YOU-

 **GET BACK HERE!**

ANTI-POOF HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-KANIN HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-EDMIN HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-PHILLIP HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

 **YOU ARE A COWARD, VENUS**

LOOK AT HOW YOU RUN AND HIDE

I KNEW MUNN HAD GIFTED YOU WITH HIS SPEED

BUT YOU ARE MAKING THIS LAUGHABLE

YOUR HUSBAND THINKS YOU'RE PATHETIC, YOU KNOW

HE ALWAYS DID

WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO TELL YOU WHAT HE TRULY THINKS OF YOU?

ANTI-ELLIOT HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

HE THINKS YOU STUPID

ANTI-SYLVESTER HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

HE DOES NOT MEAN IT AFFECTIONATELY

ANTI-SCARLETT HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

YOU ARE A DUNCE TO HIM

ANTI-SCOTT HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

YOU ARE A LIABILITY

ANTI-KATHY HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

YOU ARE TWISTED AND REPULSIVE

ANTI-COLEEN HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

YOU ARE NOTHING

ANTI-TANNER HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

I HAVE RECALIBRATED THE ENTIRE CAMARILLA APART FROM YOU, VENUS

ARE YOU SUCH A COWARD THAT YOU WOULD HIDE BEHIND CHILDREN TOO?

VERY WELL

I WILL JUST KEEP FULFILLING MY DUTIES UNTIL YOU COME OUT

ANTI-AUTUMN HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-LUKE HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-TWILIGHT HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-HECTOR HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-CHRISTOPHER HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-ANDREW HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-DELILAH HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-MARIAN HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-LISA HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-STARFIRE HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-DOLLY HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-QUIVER HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-RIDGE HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-CHARITY HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED…

…

VENUS?

I HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR AWHILE NOW

THERE ARE ONLY THREE LEFT

ARE YOU NOT GOING TO STOP ME?

I THOUGHT FOR SURE YOU WOULD TAKE AN INTEREST IN THEM

SEE HOW THEY TREMBLE AND PLEAD FOR RESCUE?

HAVE YOU NO SYMPATHY ALONG WITH YOUR LACK OF BEAUTY AND LACK OF BRAINS?

SUCH AN UNFAITHFUL WOMAN

VERY WELL

I WILL RECALIBRATE THE FINAL THREE CHILDREN IF NO ONE WISHES TO INTERVENE

I THINK I'LL START WITH THE MIDDLE CHILD

NO ONE EVER STARTS WITH THE MIDDLE CHILD

WHERE IS YOUR HIGH COUNTESS NOW, DEAR BOY?

…

GOTCHA

DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU COULD DROP DOWN ON **ME** WITH THAT **ACCURSED BRIDLE** IN HAND?

DID YOU THINK I COULD NOT SENSE YOUR APPROACH?

ANTI-COSMO KNOWS ALL YOUR TRICKS OF SPEED AND JUMPING, WOMAN

NOW BE A GOOD GIRL AND THIS WON'T HURT A BIT

ANTI-WANDA HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-WESTLEY HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-MIRANDA HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

ANTI-PHOENIX HAS BEEN RECALIBRATED

…

IT'S DONE

ALL **ERROR DATA** HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE MAIN DATA FILE

THE **EXTRA DATA** HAS BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR

MY IMAGE IN THE SACRED MURAL REMAINS INTACT

REALITY HAS STABILIZED

WHICH IS FORTUNATE BECAUSE I AM EXHAUSTED

I WILL RECALIBRATE **COSMOS** AND THEN I AM GOING BACK TO BED

…

HMM

THEY ARE VERY STUCK

…

I'LL FIX THIS IN THE MORNING

I'M SURE IT'S FINE

HE'S ALREADY IN THE SACRED MURAL

IT WILL BE LESS WORK IF I LEAVE HIM IN THIS STATE FOR NOW

* * *

SYSTEM LOCK ENGAGED

THERE IS NO ERROR

I AM NOT ERROR

I AM REALITY

ALL IS IN ORDER

THIS IS CORRECT

IF YOU ARE IN OBJECTION

 **YOU ARE ERROR**

* * *

 **A/N:** … Heh.

Now. I know the obvious question is, "What did I even just read, and is "This Is Halloween" even canon with all the other stuff, and if it is, why is it HERE? I mean, this seems like it might be pretty important; do you maybe want to save this for this later? Like, a lot later?"

Don't worry about things like that! I mean, do you _really_ think I'm the kind of person who would spoil important upcoming stuff just because Halloween fell on my update day this year and this is probably the second freakiest plot point in my repertoire?

Aha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha…


	39. (103) Evolution Hopeful

_Summary:_ There's no non-horrifying way to say Poof and Foop are shedding their exoskeletons today.

 _Characters:_ Poof, Foop, Sammy, Finley, Goldie

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "?" / "This Is a Box"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **103\. Evolution Hopeful** (Thanksgiving after Season 10)

 _Year of Water, Autumn of the Aligned Raindrops_

* * *

Having both his parents drop him off in front of the newest and most crowded housing building on Spellementary School premises would have been mortifying enough, but Anti-Wanda took it too far by kissing her "precious bundle a' darling destruction" in the center of his fat square forehead, _in front of_ both Finley Hammerfall and Sammy Sweetsparkle. Well, Finley probably hadn't looked up from his 3DS in time to see it, but pixies had long-distance noses and tasting senses or something, so yeah, he'd probably noticed. Sammy certainly had. And on top of this, her "previous bundle a' darling destruction" was already irritated with an insufferable itch he couldn't seem to scratch away from square head to bare toes. Foop grabbed his bottle to ward the woman off, only for Anti-Cosmo to pluck it from his hand and wave a warning finger.

"Ah, ah, ah. Don't you _dare_ go pointing this at your mother. Bottle that rage up and save it for a few particularly irritating Fairies instead."

"Lookit the little darling." Anti-Wanda bobbed backwards and placed one hand to Anti-Cosmo's chest. "Our brilliant babe is dun gettin' ta be more independent with every passing day. Did we get him everythin' he needs? One of those cute pencil sharpeners that makes the roaring noise? Bandages for his little scabby burned fingers? A claw filer-downer?"

"Mother." Foop itched at his neck and gave each of his ears a twitch. "I implore that you remember this is hardly my first time out of the Castle. In fact, I hardly think dropping me off today really warrants this sort of farewell to begin with. All my stuff is still in my room from last semester. You're just taking me back to school after Halloween break. You'll be seeing me again sooner than I would care to for Valentine's' Day. Wait. No, no, no. I heard it as I said it and I just remembered you will most definitely not be seeing me for Valentine's Day."

Anti-Cosmo rubbed his chin. "Oh? Is that so? Did you hear that, dear? Foop isn't going to be in the Castle on Valentine's Day."

"Shh," she giggled back, pulling the end of her ponytail in front of her mouth. "Snick, we's in front of little ones."

Foop placed his hand over his eyes. Behind him, Sammy was making little effort to conceal his coos and longing sights. At least Poof wasn't here to witness this retch-worthy display. "See," he said, "this is exactly why I don't expect to come home for Valentine's Day."

Anti-Wanda turned her attention away from Anti-Cosmo. Her elbow went up on his shoulder, and she braced her other hand against her waist. "Are ya sure ya don't want us helpin' ya get moved in for the new semester?"

"No!" Foop flung up his hands before he realized everyone was staring at him. Including a few of the other students and parents making their way from their assorted parked vehicles up to the front of the building. The hands went behind his back. "Uh. No. No, thank you. That won't be necessary, yes. Ahem. I can do it alone, Mother. I'm certain of that. Not the least of my reasons being that Poof is probably upstairs and already moved in himself. He doesn't need to see you damaging my careful reputation like this. I managed without you last time, and every time before that, and I'll manage without you again. There's really not much to move." He kicked the lone cardboard box at his feet for emphasis. Pens and pencils rattled inside.

"We could buy y'all snacks," Anti-Wanda wheedled.

"Ooh, ooh!" Sammy thrust that multicolored candy cane of a disaster he called his "sparkle stick" into the air and shook it so it rattled. "I would really enjoy some of your snacks, Mrs. Anti-Fairywinkle."

Foop waved his hands in front of him. "No, no, that isn't necessary, Mother. We'll manage without you."

Anti-Wanda leaned down, her hands braced against her knees. She grinned. "Aww, but I thought you _loved_ my frosted spider tarts and raisin-maggot loaves."

"Ooh." Hiccup slipped into control and wrung his hands. "I do so love your raisin-maggot loaves. May we also partake of your scrumptious honey-smothered cinnamon rolls?"

"No." Foop shoved his alternate personality back into the confines of their shared head again. "Mother." He forced the word through gritted teeth. Balancing his wingbeats, he tried to speak in her ear so Sammy and Finley wouldn't hear him. "First of all, honey brings DEATH to any pixie who tastes it. Second, Poof's and Sammy's families live on Earth. They can't eat the unmagicked chemicals in cloudland food, and I can't afford to give my roommates food poisoning again. Especially Poof. While it was hilarious to watch him squirm beneath me last time, _I_ had to be sick just because he was too. And I didn't even get to enjoy eating those treats you packed myself."

Making his roommates suffer a bout of sickness from time to time may be entertaining while they were merely children, but the four of them were bound to be roommates until they graduated high school (or dropped out- a possibility that seemed all too likely for Poof and Finley). Nipping the sadistic habit in the bud might pay off in the long run, when grades started to matter and the others expected him to take any notes they may have missed.

Or… something. It was a complicated feeling to put into words. The thing was, there weren't a lot of Anti-Fairies attending Spellementary School. In introductory year, he hadn't been particularly popular. But this was his second semester since moving into the dorms. He was older now. He actually had roommates and stayed on campus like the big kids. When things started going wrong, who did people start to blame? The Anti-Fairies. Foop had had enough food thrown on him in the cafeteria and gym class to last him another several years or so. He anticipated going through phases- cause a little mischief here, lie a little low there. Get smarter, get more clever, become more difficult to catch in the act.

That was all. He certainly wasn't going soft. Not before he'd even hit his prime.

Anti-Wanda shrugged. "Yeah, I know about the sickly stuff. That's why I snuck a few li'l snacks from home into that there box of yours, and they're just for you."

"Mother, you evil genius," he said lightly. He kept the compliment formal, so she wouldn't get any silly ideas in her head about him actually liking her or something. He scratched at his neck again, and came away with a handful of pale blue hairs. Hmm. Must be shedding season. Anti-Fairies probably shed. With… with winter around the corner, apparently. Not that it really mattered in the cloudlands, where temperatures remained nearly constant year-round…

Anti-Wanda waved him back to reality with a pat between his ears. "All righty. Well, have a whole bout a' good karma on your heels, then. My big boy. _K'yoo!_ "

Foop rolled his eyes and turned his back- more for show than because he actually planned to leave while his father still had a tight grip on his magic bottle. "Good-bye, Mother."

"Foop?"

That was Anti-Cosmo. Foop drew out the moment for an extra two second, scratching his arm, then twisted his entire awkward, square body around to look up at him. Anti-Cosmo floated beside Anti-Wanda with arms crossed.

"Do try not to maim anyone while you're on campus this year. No keeping live monsters in your apartment, no biting any living creature without permission, no attempts at sewing yoo-doo dolls, no occult circles or attempting to contact the spirits of the dead, and no burying people alive and then digging up and punching them."

"With more than your due respect, Father, I am fully aware that the rules of this irritating learning facility are far stricter than what I am used to back in Anti-Fairy World. I'm fully capable of conducting myself like a good boy when in the presence of Fairy witnesses."

"And absolutely," Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda said together, " _no_ dissecting your roommates."

"Yes, thank you, we get it!" Foop almost - _almost_ \- resisted the urge to snatch his bottle back from Anti-Cosmo's hand. It was cold and wet with condensation against his skin, the liquid magic inside glinting and reflective regardless of the direction the light hit its sides. All that raw power bubbling icy cold beneath his fingertips, it made him want to lift his hand and-

"Easy does it," Hiccup warned, slipping past Foop's consciousness to take the reins again. He rubbed the bottle against his elbow and forced a smile. "My, and you were doing so very well at keeping your anger maintained, too. We're nearly inside and up in our lovely little apartment. Don't blow everything we've worked so hard for at the entryway."

Foop clenched his fangs. One of the bat wings flanking his bottle scratched against his wrist. " _We've_ worked so hard for? Who is 'we' in this case? You're not exactly one for plotting anybody's demise."

"Ah, do remember that we are out of that enclosed jailspace on probation. We made arrangements that Caudwell would come _here_ to see us. Let's not get ourselves locked up in another tight cell so soon after our last release."

Foop groaned. Stepping back into control, he rubbed one of his upper corners. "Right. We're working on that anger management thing. How nice it will be to spend another all-too-long semester in the very same apartment as my dear nemesis Poof again. This used to be illegal, you know. Fairies and their counterparts rooming together."

"And," Anti-Cosmo said, placing a hand on his son's head, "how grateful we are that times have changed. Not only have we managed to keep the Barrier down for years, but Anti-Fairies are being freely allowed into a school that once denied them entry. Do not. Ruin this for us."

His claws tightened on those final words. The tips pricked against Foop's blubbery head.

Anti-Cosmo pulled back, Anti-Wanda waved one last time. Together they flew back to the jet they'd parked haphazardly on top of some unfortunate Fairy mother's minivan. Anti-Cosmo started up the engine, and the jet lifted shakily into the air. Four booster rockets revved. Flames spewed out the back. They flew in an arc around the floating rocky islands containing the other six housing buildings, passing over the center one that held the Spellementary School building itself, and zoomed off into the starry distance. Finally well on their way back to the actual cloudlands for good.

Foop did not watch their smoke trail disappear. Instead, he huffed through his nostrils and turned to face the pixie and the huldu behind him. The two young Fairykind stood below one of very few leafy trees on their island (useful passageway for the western elves, that; Foop fully intended on gathering some of their DNA this year to see if he could figure out how to trigger the door himself).

He snorted one more time before he waved his bottle. The cardboard box at his feet lifted into the air with a steady stream of purple-blue. "Well? Finley? Sammy? I impart my greetings from Anti-Fairy World. It's a relief to be back here after such a long and stifling three-week break in my parents' castle. True, I did have a lot of spare time to enact some of my evil schemes upon the human population, but I am a baby intended to live away from his mother and father from time to time."

"I ate pizza every day and roped some of my bros into doing my chores," Finley said without looking up from his game.

Foop tilted back his head to take in the building as he and Sammy floated (and Finley walked) up the front steps. As they pushed their way through the front doors, he scratched his throat. "So. Anyone heard any word from Poof yet? He's not exactly a morning person, so I expected him to be checking in late like us."

Finley's 3DS let out music much too cheerful to signal a character's death. He shut it without emotion and pushed his shades down from their usual place on his forehead so they covered his eyes. "Battery's almost dead and the outlets up here only run magical wattage. Of course. Oh. Poof? He got permission to come back early so he could avoid the poofarazzi. Didn't you get his text?"

"No cell signal in Anti-Fairy World, remember? Really, I thought you of all magical creatures would know this. Figures. I have my own personal scry bowl, _and_ a crystal ball small enough to hang from my keychain, and what does he use? The cell phone." Noises down the hall. Foop flicked his ears forward and started to fly faster. "Once I get hooked up to the digi-stream here, I'm sure my phone will EXPLODE with messages. Though it likely won't be as exciting as it sounds. Come on, they're registering down this way. Let's get checked in so we can _poof_ ourselves straight up to our room."

"Ooh, right. About that." Finley ran after him, waving his hand above his head. "Can you be a bro and pick up the tab for me?" When Foop turned his glare on him, the pixie raised his hands defensively. "Tomte. Can't use magic. Or fly. Look, come on. You're doing it for Sammy anyway. We kind of waited for you to show up for this. It would be rad if you came through for us."

Sammy nodded. "My family are all about being natural and getting by on what Mother Nature gave us. They might even" - his voice dropped to a whisper - "pull my ears really hard if they caught me trying to do starpiece magic."

Finley fished around in the pockets of his coat and came up with a small handful of coins. These, he held up to Foop. "I'm sure I can scrape together enough to pay you off. Aren't you here on scholarship anyway just because you're Unseelie? Your _poof_ ing fees are all waived even outside the school building, right?"

"Bunch of insipid morons," Foop muttered. But, morons with limited magic between them they may be, they were still, y'know… his friends. Friends he had no problem taking money from, but his friends to some degree nonetheless.

Sammy beamed. "I'm looking forward to hanging with all my learning pals and study buddies again. I spent three weeks in cuddly quarters with my entire extended family. By the end of it, I started to think I might explode, ha ha ha."

"Yes, yes, but you'll have to meet _my_ extended family one of these days." Foop pushed open the door that led into the… registration… room. The one with the super soft carpet where they sometimes sat on towels or blankets and ate pizza or had story time. Sure enough, their RA was already there behind the yellow table, being much too peppy for any sane person as he breezed through the on-campus magic and digi-stream usage permits and practically threw room keys every which way. Those in line for his table dove for cover while the other students looked on sympathetically. Foop grunted, but waved Finley and Sammy through anyway before he let the door fall shut. "Your family are cheerful social nightmares, Sammy. But try having a decent meal when surrounded by crazy cousins on both sides who are all constantly arguing over who gets to be next in line if you don't measure up to standards by the time you're meant to inherit the High Count Seat from your father. They spend their free time planning to inflict me with doom beyond measure, I swear."

"I was ripped away from the family who raised me after I turned three and unceremoniously thrust into the workplace for intense training on how to fill out paperwork in ten different languages, mix exactly the right type of coffee, and pretend I don't have emotions," Finley said mournfully.

"Well." Sammy brushed his fingers down the front of his glittery pink shirt. "This year, my family is going to celebrate Winter Turn with more candy and ice cream than we've ever had before. There's going to be colorful streamers, and bouncy houses, and ice sculptures imported from Iceland that change pretty colors just like the Northern Lights, and my parents are only accepting those because they're a gift from my birth parents-"

"Super lame," Foop groaned, rubbing behind his neck.

Hiccup smacked him out of position. The hovering cardboard box dropped to the floor, bouncing off Finley's head on its way there. Pencils and crayons spilled across the ground. "Ah, ignore my brother's rudeness. I think that all sounds delightful, Sammy. Please do tell us more."

So Sammy did, cheerily waving his sparkle stick about as the three children waited in line at the registration desk for their year. Well, rickety plastic table, but you know how it goes. Hiccup did not miss the fact that many of the other kids nearby had their parents along with them. But, he mused, perhaps in the end, it was all for the best. Fairies tended to run away screaming when his father began to get upset. And High Count Anti-Cosmo wasn't the type who could wait patiently in line without getting upset. Such was his lot in life, the only sane child in their crazy little family.

After they had properly said hello to their RA-slash-surrogate father figure and temporary guardian figure and signed in at the front desk, Hiccup took Foop's bottle and gave it a wave. After a few tries, he managed to _poof_ Finley, Sammy, and himself just outside their apartment door with a cloud of smoke. He coughed into his fist as he looked about.

"Hey! I didn't even forget anybody's limbs this time."

Of course, Sammy leaned against the wall with his head on the ground and his feet in the air, and Finley was spread-eagle on his back. Better than last time, at least. As his two friends sat up with soft groans, Hiccup's attention turned even further down the hall to a cluster of three young damsels who had just turned around. One was an elf with puffy seafoam hair, and the other was a leprechaun wearing a green dress. Hiccup couldn't remember their names, but he did know Goldie Goldenglow by her blonde pigtails and shimmering orange and white wings. So, he offered her a little wave with the hand that wasn't plucking at the skin on his neck. Goldie waved back with a stack of flyers in her hand.

"You shed," he greeted.

"Did I?" Goldie ran her hand along the ruffles of her brown skirt. "A couple a' weeks back, I suppose. Hey, Sammy. Freckley. Fooch."

"Actually, it's Hiccup."

Goldie's face went blank, like this wasn't the correction she'd been expecting.

"Well. Uh." She looked down at her flyers. "That darling man who watches over our housing… Garter, I think his name was. Garter snake? Slither? Stilts? Hmm. Y'all know who I mean. He asked us to come pass these around." So saying, Goldie handed over one of her papers. Hiccup paused from his skin-picking to take it. He held it away from his body and traced out the words, "Opening social." When Sammy and Finley peered over his shoulders, he looked up.

"There's a party down in the lounge tonight? Gee. No one's ever invited me to a party before."

"With healthy snacks like carrot sticks, string cheese, almonds, bananas, kale, and acorn muffins. Oh, I just love carrot sticks." Goldie's smile disappeared. Her hand flapped down. "Not corn. Corn's a starch."

She could rattle off all those foods, but she still couldn't get his name right? Hiccup decided to ignore that train of thought in favor of bunching the flyer between his fingers. "Oh yeah. I'd love to come."

"Give that to Poof, will ya," she said absently, and floated away with a few flits of her wings. Her friends scurried after her, giggling into their hands. Hiccup exchanged looks with Sammy and Finley, shrugged, then reached up to swipe his keycard in the door. It opened into the kitchen, with the living room straight across the way. The blinds were pulled up. They offered a pleasant view into their building's courtyard and playground, but even Hiccup had to wince at the amount of natural sunlight leaking in and tracing jagged patterns along the ceiling. Ah, well. At least all the red-brown cushions were arranged in their proper places on the couch, and the flecked countertop was so neat and tidy, it registered as a smooth surface to his sonar without even a hint of crumbs strewn over everything.

Foop wrenched control back from Hiccup and turned on Finley. "I thought you told us that Poof was already here."

Finley lifted his shades and squinted. "He said he was. Let me check my texts."

Sammy looked around too, pressing a finger to the corner of his lips. "He sent me a letter with a really pretty blue stamp that gave the exact date and time he planned to move in. I thought he'd been here for a week already."

Foop rolled his eyes and scratched behind his neck with one wing on his bottle. "Well, he's obviously not here now. This place is actually clean and organized. If he moved in, then it must have been this morning, just before the rest of us."

Hiccup brought his hands together in front of his chest. "If Sammy says that Poof is here, then Poof must be here."

"Uh." Finley jabbed a thumb at his chest. "Okay. I'm a pixie, though? Really good memory for things I read? I said he was here too."

Hiccup's eyes slid over his face. "I don't believe I was talking to you."

Foop crossed his arms, the bottle chilling in his hand as it reacted to his growing impatience. "He's probably down the hall talking to friends again. Perhaps hanging out with the O'Terraes. No matter. I'll just get myself moved in." He waved his bottle to levitate his box again. "Not that I have that much to move, seeing as I left most of my stuff here over the break. Unlike some technology addicts who can't seem to go hands-off for a refreshing few weeks."

"Oh, so now you're talking about me."

To Foop's relief (and admittedly Hiccup's too), the room they and Finley shared on the left hand side had remained intact and untouched, just the way they'd left it before break. Finley's bed was on the right, straight across from the door. His own was tucked away into the back corner. True, it did place his head very close to the building's metal stairwell, which often irritated his sensitive ears, but the privacy offered by the response effort of getting over there was well worth it.

The adjustable lamp bent over his file organizer. His desk stood at attention with its sticky notes ordered by color and his chair pushed under. While Finley broke out his own stuff, Foop sliced open his box with his claws for the first time to find that his mother had indeed come through for him. Three paper plates of assorted Anti-Fairy breads and goodies had been wrapped in tinfoil and placed carefully among his new desk supplies. Presumably the treats were as sugar-free as had been possible, and presumably that was best for his health. It was a gentle gesture either way, and Foop reflected that perhaps he ought to actually get her something nice for Mother's Day this year, instead of another batch of paper coupons ordering her to stay back whenever he decided to redeem them.

Another bottle flick unwrapped his freshly-clean bedsheets from the bottom of the box and spread them out across his bed. The corners tucked themselves under. The pillows fluffed up. Foop grabbed his new gel pens in his fist and lined them in a row on his desk according to the size of their nib. One started to roll out of place. He put it back.

Perfect. Everyone always said the second semester following the move into the Spellementary dorms was the hardest part of the first seven years, with the biggest leaps in scientific logic made and the introduction of mathematics, ripple effects, and booster wonders to a world that had formerly been capped with child-safety locks. Foop expected all three of his roommates to crack under the pressure, but not him. He, for one, would not let schoolwork catch him unawares.

"And done." Finley stood up and pushed his hat higher with his thumb. "Phew. Dude, you're so lucky you're not a tomte. If I had magic, the first thing I'd do is teach myself how to plug in all these wires so I don't have to untangle all these cords by hand."

Foop winced as he turned around. "Please don't try to turn me into a good luck charm, or I'll be itching the rash for days. Actually hold that thought." He itched several times at his neck, then realized what his roommate had done and stopped. "Oh, wow."

Not surprisingly, Finley had already plugged one of his video game consoles into his personal miniature gaming TV. Various consoles, controllers, and cases containing cartridges, discs, and other assorted games from various advanced races and places in the universe lined his bookshelf until they spilled over at his feet. Foop raised one eyebrow. "Finley, where are your bedsheets?"

"Didn't bring any. Extra bags cost extra coins, and I'm not about that." Finley picked up a gray game controller and threw himself into the gray bean bag he'd dropped between their beds. "I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Finley." Foop positioned himself in front of the screen before Finley could click away from the menu. He tightened his fingers, then let them relax again. "You do realize that you are an ectothermic poikilotherm. You can't regulate your own body temperature."

"Well, yeah, but…" Finley leaned to one side, clicking buttons in his lap. "Neither can you."

"Finley," Foop repeated. He bobbed backwards, spreading his wings to cover as much of the TV as possible until Finley's eyes focused on his face. "Without proper warmth and coverage, you could literally freeze to death."

"Nah, they've got heaters all over this place."

"Yes, so I've noticed. And what would you do if the heaters were to break down without warning? May I remind you, you're a tomte. Also known as, a _magicless Fairykind._ "

"Then I'd find a guy to _poof_ me home to Pixie World."

Foop rolled his eyes. Rubbing behind his ear, he rephrased the question. "If the Big Wand were to shut down, and with it all electricity throughout the cloudlands and surrounding areas, what would you do about it to keep yourself from freezing to death?"

"Okay, first of all." Finley stuck one finger in the air. "I'd just take your blankets. You've got like fifty thousand of them."

"I have two."

"Second, you see these freckles all over my cheeks like acne?" The jabbing finger turned into a pointing thumb. "I'm a gyne, bro. I don't have to worry about that smoof. Instead of freezing, I'd just go into diapause and sleep until I get like, true love's kiss or whatever."

Foop shrugged. "For the record, I made a point of warning you. This is no longer my problem and I cannot be held accountable for anything you may suffer in the future."

"So are you done telling me how to live my life?" Finley asked, perching the controller on his knee. "We've only got five days before classes start, and I still haven't beaten Level 36 on this thing."

"Admittedly, I'm surprised you aren't choosing to get ready for Gray Tuesday instead. You know you'll…" Foop made a swirling gesture with his hand in an attempt to encompass various pixies being flooded with Fairy magic, summoned back to Pixie World, and overseeing paperwork, deliveries, and hectic magical shoppers fighting over low prices, all at the same time.

"Ha ha. You make it sound like I'm a clone of some responsible part of my dad. Nah. I'm the nose-booping, belly-rubbing, tech-obsessed part. Actually, I was thinking I'd skip town for a little while. Dunno where yet, but there's gotta be somewhere the Head won't find me." He glanced over his shoulder. "You going anywhere for the holiday? I could tag along with you."

"It's not really a holiday for those of us who aren't pixies. I was planning to be here, at school, learning. As I am intended to do."

Finley let out a dry, "Ha ha, ha ha" sort of chuckle and leaned back in his bean bag. "It's not really a holiday for those of us who are pixies, either. Keep me posted, bro."

Foop let him be. Rubbing a knuckle against his nose, he drifted out of the room and over the kitchen counter to see Sammy kneeling on the hard floor, rummaging in the cupboards for snacks. "Sammy," he snapped, "don't get your sparkly hands all over the food that's meant for all of us!"

Sammy dropped the cracker box and glanced up. "Oh, uh. I found Poof! He was hiding in the bathroom. He looked like he was feeling really unwell, so I thought I could make him something nice to eat. But it looks like all we have left is some chips and crackers, and these chocolate cookies. Someone already took a big bite out of all of them." He drew the plastic package from the cupboard and stretched up to place them on the kitchen counter. "You can have them if you want. Would you like to try some?"

Foop eyed it with his eyebrows raised. "I've wised up since last semester, and I'm going to pass on accepting food from one of the huldufólk, thanks."

Sammy hummed in the back of his throat, which was essentially his sweet version of groaning. "Aww, of course. I'll get back to you on that." He poured a handful of crackers into his hands and stood. "You know, in the Faroes, some people say that the huldufólk actually look like pixies. They say they wear boring gray colors, and they have really black hair. And then there's the pointy hats." He flicked his own for emphasis. "Maybe it's actually pixies you aren't supposed to accept food from, and huldufólk are fine. Golly. Have you ever thought about that before?"

"The effects of human storytelling on the biology and magic of supernatural creatures such as ourselves is not my area of expertise. I am a man of established, unwavering, predictable science." He gave his hair a tug. "You said Poof was in your bathroom?"

Sammy tucked a scrap of his own bright blond hair behind his pointed ear. "And he doesn't sound like he feels very good."

"All the better, then." Foop picked up the flyer that Hiccup had apparently left forgotten on the counter at some point or another… unless that had been him. The opening social party was scheduled to start soon enough, and he and Poof hadn't even had a good squabble yet today. Flyer in hand, he floated over to the second bedroom in the apartment.

Before he got there, he stopped at the beaded curtain that functioned as a door. It wasn't necessarily the most secure defense of all time, but by the nature of pixie and Anti-Fairy wings, the threat of becoming tangled up in beads did an effective job of keeping them out.

"Poof," he called, craning his neck. He flapped the flyer up and down. No Anti-Fairy for twenty meters could miss that sound. And no simple Fairy either, he figured. "Did Sammy tell you about the super delightful party that you are surely too sick to attend tonight?"

He was answered by heavy retching noises deeper inside the room. Automatically, Foop touched his fingertips to his stomach. His own didn't really feel like it was churning. He turned to look at Sammy, in case the huldu had any news about whatever bug it was that had gotten his counterpart so apparently sick. Sammy shrugged.

Well. Foop pulled in his wings. For a moment, he toed the carpet in front of the doorway. He'd never exactly… been inside Poof's and Sammy's room before. It wasn't like he was explicitly forbidden to (or else that's the first rule he would have broken, just for the smoof of it). He'd just never really wanted to or seen the need, that's all. Poof was something of a cousin to him, and not one with whom he was close enough to want to poke around in his private stuff without permission or the siren call of bad luck. It was just common decency. Not to mention that his natural instincts raged in his brain every time he came close. Getting near Poof always filled him with such a strong, tumultuous emotion- a hot, boiling feeling that made his lips curl into a sneer, made his shoulders tense, and warned him back just like the glowing light on the stove.

And frankly, his own roommate was a pixie. True, Finley's foster family (whoever the Hammerfalls were) had rubbed off on him strongly during his youth and left him more irresponsible than most. But he was still a pixie. The two of them kept their shared room well organized. What might that mean for his counterpart's quarters? Yes, it was a new semester, so their room couldn't have gotten that messed up, but a chaotic fairy and a party-loving huldu within the same enclosed space simply reeked of trouble.

Poof retched again, and this time it was followed by a moan. Foop itched uncertainly at the back of his wrist. He knew all too well that he and Poof shared a bond closer than most Fairy and Anti-Fairy counterparts did. It was that stupid level of magic between them- the way they each held equal shares of their "magic pool", where they drew their available power from the Big Wand. Because he and Poof were so close, Foop even had to share Poof's minor injuries like papercuts.

But he didn't feel at all sick. So what kind of bug could have affected his counterpart, but not affected him? The only reason they wouldn't have synced up was if Poof hadn't technically been inflicted internally with an ailment of some sort. Perhaps he's simply eaten something that didn't agree with him. Perhaps he was puking because he was homesick. He had been here alone for a week, after all. Yes, that could be it. Surely it wouldn't be…

"Oh, smoke no." Foop pushed his hand up his forehead, sliding it back over ears and the single tuft of black hair on his big square head. "Don't tell me he's throwing up will o' the wisp saliva."

That would be just like him, wouldn't it? Foop slapped the beads apart with the back of his hand, keeping his wings very still as he pushed through the curtain.

Oh. So this was the mystery world of Poof and Sammy's bedroom. It was all too easy to tell which of the two beds belonged to his counterpart (Hint: Not the one with the plastic dinosaurs and building blocks all over it). Poof's sheets were silky, purple, and all twisted and tangled up. The wall above the bed had been decorated with posters of both long-ago and present-day saucerbee stars, clippings of newspapers that mentioned either his own or Timmy Turner's name, and various cheerful photos of him hanging out with his friends. Most of them looked to be of him and Timmy, or his parents. A few more of them were dedicated to Goldie Goldenglow. Studying the wall for a moment, Foop even managed to pick out his own face.

After catching a quick glimpse of the cluttered desk in the corner, displaying a half-devoured package of Oreos in place of actual useful items (a notebook, a couple of baskets for organizing homework assignments, a lamp, _something_ ), Foop turned away from the bedroom and walked into the bathroom instead.

And there he was. Poof, dressed in his usual pale purple onesie, standing on the tips of his toes with his fat round head almost entirely in the smooth brown basin.

Foop tapped his foot against the tile. "Oh, come on. Stop fooling around, Poof. If you were really that sick, then I would be too."

Poof threw up another barrage of glittering purple sludge. The moment it hit the bowl, it was teleported off into some alternate universe. Oh yes, Foop fondly recalled studying and utilizing the same technology to design a playpen that would have had the same effect on his irritating counterpart. Those were the days.

"Foop," Poof rasped. He reached a twitching hand vaguely in the anti-fairy's direction. "I think it's… my time."

"It's your-? Oh…" Foop leaned away from his counterpart and evaluated the situation over again. The fact that only Poof was currently afflicted with the need to throw up. Sammy's comment about finding only crackers and half-eaten cookies in the cupboards when Cosmo and Wanda always stocked plenty of food for everyone. Foop caught his lower lip with his fangs. "Seriously? You're choosing to shed now? With the new semester starting and the opening social tonight?"

"I didn't choose it," Poof groaned, sinking back to the bowl. "C'mon, don't you think I'd want my parents to be here?" He curled his hand into a fist. "But Timmy just finished a major homework project, and my mama and dad promised to spend the entire day 100% focused on him, no distractions. I… can't get in their way. Even for this."

Foop picked at the thin fur on his forehead and sighed. "I take it now that I'm not going to that party tonight if we're about to shed. In no way do I intend to suddenly lose my form and be caught nude in the middle of the dance floor if the poofarazzi should come snooping around in search of you. Assuming that these opening socials even have dance floors- I seem to remember being stopped in my tracks almost the moment I stepped into the last one. Apparently, flamethrowers are forbidden at these types of things, even when there are ice sculptures on hand. Who knew?"

Poof leaned over the basin and threw up once again. Foop grimaced. Well, at least he didn't have to stand behind him and hold his counterpart's single curly hair out of his face or something.

So, Foop left him to it and crossed back to his own bedroom. His bookshelf was still stacked from last semester with child development books that described the exoskeleton shedding process, though of course Timmy's stupid frozen timestream wish had delayed Poof's growth, and with it, his own. Up 'til now.

"I knew our time had to be coming eventually," he muttered, either to Finley or Hiccup (or whoever else was out there that might be listening), "but I wasn't expecting it first thing when we got back. This is so unfair. I was going to spike the punch bowl at that party with real spikes! Ughh." He leaned back his head. "And the moment Mother and Father get wind of this, my relaxing transition into winter semester is toast. Then it's all statue carvings and extended family gatherings and rubbing shoulders with the elite socialites and those accursed itchy cravats made of owl feathers that Mum is so fond of. Hmm." Foop peered over Finley's bed to watch the racing cars on his TV screen. "There has to be _somewhere_ I can stay when they come looking to drag me into that never-ending spiral of showing off their precious baby prince. Prison? A black hole? The Hocus Poconos? Jersey City?"

"Did you say something?" Finley asked as his car zoomed across the finish line. The fanfare erupted, and Finley golf clapped for his own victory. "Dude, maybe you need to cut back on the grape juice and go back to wine. There's a lot less sugar in that stuff, and you sound like you've cracked."

"Cracked? Ohh, there's an idea!" Foop slapped his forehead. "I should have thought of that myself immediately. Crocker! Mother and Father would never dare to set foot in _his_ place so long as he and his mother are about. Once the word gets out about Fairy World's favorite celebrity entering his juvenile form and Father figures out that I'm not far behind, I'll leave a stuffed dummy in my place and high-tail it to Dimmsdale."

"Whoa, hey." Finley stopped clapping and turned around, craning his neck to peer over his short, sheetless bed. "Did you say Crocker? You mean like, D. Crocker? Didn't he like, die of old age three years ago or something?"

"… No. He didn't. That was the kooky old grandfather who somehow wedged himself into a grandfather clock and didn't survive the surgeries that followed that collision."

"Oh, I remember. Crocker's the guy who goes even more cuckoo over genies than your dad does."

"You're thinking Albert Crocker."

"Wasn't that the witch guy who fell down the well?" Finley asked with a frown.

"And I believe thaaat's Alden Bitterroot."

"Then he's the little guy with the thingie in his hair. The licky thingy. And he's got big red shoes."

Foop rolled his eyes. "Getting warmer."

"Okay, one more try. I think I've got it this time. Crocker's like the RA's dad, right?" Finley turned his hands into scales and made as though weighing invisible objects with magically changing weights. "The crazy rich RA owed him his life, built him a thingie, Sanderson took control of politics, and then suddenly there were geese and squirrels instead of pink elephants everywhere?"

"Sure, Finley. Let's go with that."

"Eh, I gave it a good attempt either way." Finley flicked his shades down over his eyes again. "You really staying with that crackpot just to duck your parents? I've heard he's real bad news. If he can legally buy frosted animal crackers, count me in. I'll just hang with you this Tuesday."

"Rest assured, inkstain- Crocker always has animal crackers in his disheveled hovel of a-" Foop's finger hovered above the Call button on his phone. "Oh, drat. It's bound to be past midnight in Dimmsdale by now, and he always goes to bed around 9:00. Ah, well. I'll just call him in a few hours when his middle-aged bladder wakes him up in the middle of the night."

So saying, Foop tossed his phone on his bed and settled down to skim the first textbook he'd grabbed. Because exoskeleton shedding was supposed to occur in babies at the time of weaning, which was almost always pre-pooferty, there was actually very limited information available on the process of shedding itself. Foop had read this particular chapter so many times in frustrated anticipation that he'd actually bitten the blast and dog-eared the page's corner. Sure enough, he read the familiar words again: _The first stage of shedding is when the hunger kicks in. The actual shed results in the loss of warm blubber. Drained of energy, the Fairy faces an immediate need to feast or risk starvation._

Suffice to say, with the limited state of foodstuffs in the kitchen, it was not looking all that good.

"Sammy," Foop called, shutting the heavy book and sliding it back onto its shelf. "Get in here so we can talk. I have something I want to say."

Sammy's head appeared around the doorway. When it did, Foop picked up his bottle and switched off Finley's TV. The screen flashed to black.

"Aw, man." Finley sat up. "What the smoof was that for?"

"Poof is under the weather because he is going to shed his exoskeleton in under an hour. Which means I" - Foop jabbed his thumb into his chest to ensure they understood - "am going to shed my exoskeleton shortly after him. I'm taking a rain check and staying inside so I don't shed in public, but that means I need you losers to get your wings in gear. Poof needs to stuff his face after he sheds, and I'm going to find myself in much the same predicament. He's also going to be itchy, snot-nosed, and freezing. So I need one of you to run down and tell what's-his-face that Poof needs extra blankets from the storage closet. Electric if possible. The other one needs to find food, and a lot of it. It would seem Poof already started eating before we got here, but he'll need even more once the shedding is complete."

"Ooh!" Sammy clasped his hands in front of his chest. "I know which blankets are really the best after shedding. You want the pelts with the hairs on only one side, not the fuzzy kind that have fluff on both. It feels more like blubber that way. I'll see if I can find some downstairs. Maybe no one else is using them. But if they are, I'm sure that they'll be willing to share when they hear that Poof is in need. Making friends and being nice is always possible when you ask for little favors really sweetly."

Foop blinked. "Wow. I'm not sure whether to be sickened here, or break into guffaws. I'm going with sickened. Bleh."

"Yeeeaaah…" Finley leaned back in his bean bag and placed his hat over his eyes. "Food patrol? Not gonna happen, bro. I just got here. Do you even know how long the commute was up here from Pixie World? It was like… long."

Foop snatched the hat away. "Oh, I fully expect it will happen. You want _Sammy_ to grocery shop for us? A huldu? Offering us food? Seriously?"

"Ehhh…" The pixie rubbed his cheek for a moment like he was seriously considering it. Foop rolled his eyes and shoved the pointy hat back into his hands.

"Well, get going. Or when Poof sheds, he's going to eat us out of house and home."

Finley set his controller aside. "Dude, where the hey am I supposed to find food? We can't like, leave to go shopping without the RA, y'know?"

"You're a gyne! Go forage somewhere." Foop gestured towards the door with the hand that wasn't massaging his throat. "The vending machines. The cafeteria. The garbage. Other people's apartments. The party they're probably setting up for. I don't care. Just do it now."

Finley placed his hands to his sharp knees and pushed himself up with a sigh. "I'm a-getting. Come on, Samus."

Foop followed them to their apartment's door to ensure they left. Once it shut behind them, he folded his arms. "Idiots," he muttered. "A wonder the world runs on them. Look at what Sammy alone has done to this kitchen. Torn boxes, tattered plastic bags, dirty dishes, crushed cans, crumbs all over the floor. And he was only left alone out here a few minutes. I won't stand for this. Once the poofarazzi finds out their favorite celebrity is finally shedding, we're going to be overrun. Not to mention I'm likely going to be bedridden for the next day or two, and those utter morons don't know the first thing about organizing." He inhaled and spread his fingers, palms out in front of him. "Not to worry, not to worry. Let's just get on with it."

He picked up the dustpan and the small red brush that paired with it and began to crawl about the floor, sweeping even under the little spots where the counters overhung the floor. Fifteen minutes into his task, Foop sat back on his heels, his claws embedded in the back of his neck. "Wait a minute. What am I doing? Duh!" He grabbed his bottle from behind his back. "Magic bottle, hello! Really, that was obvious."

Poof threw up again on the other side of the wall, much louder this time than before. As Foop watched the dirty kitchen right itself again, he paused. He tip-toed back to the beaded curtain and parted it with his hand.

"Uh… Poof? Are you okay in here?"

"Maybe this is what it feels like when you're about to have a baby." Poof cracked open an eyelid. "Hey, Foop. Maybe you can come in here and talk to me? It'll probably help take my mind off feeling sick, and I've never seen you ever run out of things to say."

"You say that like you ever got bored of saying 'Poof poof' for years on end. I wouldn't really be insulting me at a time like this. I am, after all, the only one left here to look after you." Foop sat on the floor, placing his back against the cupboard under the sink. This way, he could see just enough of Poof's face peering over the basin's edge without having to watch him the entire time, or at least look like he was.

What did people talk about with babies who were shedding? Foop scratched his nose, then glanced over at his counterpart.

"So, ah… What do you think you'll look like? You know, after you get your real body and a full head of hair."

"Mm… I've always thought I'll look more like my mom than my dad." Poof reached up to flick the P-shaped curl on top of his head. "But there's never any way to tell for sure before it happens. It could really go either way. My grandpa has straighter, scruffy hair, and my grandma has curls, even though he's Mama's dad and she's Dad's mama. Go figure." He yawned. His eyelids fell shut. "What about you?"

Foop shrugged his wings. His hands wandered down to his bare feet. He wedged his fingers between his toes. "I'll look however you will, I suppose. Except I'm obviously destined to get the looks between us."

"Heh. If you're the brains and I'm the brawn, I bet you'll look like a baboon's other end."

"I will not! You'll look like a baboon's other end. And that doesn't even make sense, because 'end' in conjecture with 'other' implies the face rather than the tail. Which I suppose doesn't make that much of a difference in the point you were trying to make, come to think of it. Assumption being, of course, that your simile was meant as an insult."

Silence again.

Foop coughed in the back of his mouth and picked at his shoulder. "We'll be, um… naked, won't we? After we shed?"

"I think that's the way it usually goes."

Shorter silence.

"Well, in that case, shouldn't we _poof_ up our new signature outfits in advance?"

Poof groaned. "Oh man, I haven't even started designing mine."

"What? You are _such_ a procrastinator! I had mine done since I was just a few months old." Foop lashed his bottle and _poof_ ed up a notebook with a scaly red cover. He opened it, thumbed through to the well-worn halfway point, and then turned the pages around so Poof could see (even if it was through a squint and permanently bag-heavy eyes). "See, look. I went through hundreds of different designs before, finally, I settled on the perfect one. Well." He frowned. "Hiccup chose the black undershirt, actually, but that's beside the point. See, look. I'm going for dark blue sweater vest. It will look brilliant with my light fur tone and all. And the purple collar and vest sleeves will match my freckles. They'll be coming out more as we get older, you know, what with you being a gyne and me being a pilot, and all."

"I want a purple shirt with yellow cuffs on the ends of the sleeves."

"No you don't. That's a terrible color scheme." Foop slapped the cover of his notebook. "See, Poof, _this_ is why you're supposed to plan these things in advance. You can't expect to be in the right frame of mind for art when you're this close to shedding."

"Foop, I know it kinda works that way for Anti-Fairies, but most of us Fairies don't even hit pooferty until after we shed. We can't really talk or make designs when we're that out of it."

Foop rubbed one of his temples. "Then I suppose I'll have to help you. Any ideas? Any _good_ ideas?"

Poof turned his head away, pressing his cheek against the basin's rim. "Someday, I'm going to get on a sports team and wear one of those cool jackets in my school's color."

"Yes, yes, I'm sure you will. But let's focus on the here and now. So?" He _poof_ ed up his reading glasses and his favorite pen- the one with the red ink, and the cap shaped like a skull. "Do you have any concepts to use as a starting point?"

"I want a purple shirt with yellow sleeve cuffs."

"Poof, if you don't contribute seriously, I'm going to design you something more the styles of Anti-Fairy fashion. Honestly, like it or not, you are a celebrity. You've got to own it. If you go around looking like a slob, what is that going to make me?"

"The opposite of a slob?" he suggested innocently.

Foop resisted the urge to snap his pen in half. "Well, yes, I suppose so, but that's beside the point. We're still generally associated with one another, especially when we're doomed to be cohort roommates all the way until we either graduate upper school, or you and Finley snap and kill each other first. Throw me a bone."

"Okay, get this." Poof lifted both hands from the rim of the basin. "I want a simple purple shirt to match my hair."

"Yes?"

"And yellow sleeve cuffs."

"Why do you insist on making yourself miserable this way?"

"Suck it up," Poof muttered, closing his eyes. He leaned his cheek against the basin once more. "When I get older, I'm going to wear a yellow shirt. With a green saucerbee jacket for Carl Poofypants High on top. With red heart pins and buttons everywhere. And a blue headband to keep my hair back. With ribbons that flow in the wind. I want all the colors."

Foop removed his reading glasses. "Now you're just talking nonsense. You're going to be a clashing wreck with far too much going on."

"Hey, I might change my mind later." Poof lifted his head again. "Don't tell me you were planning to wear that same black shirt and blue sweater vest design all the way through to your adult years."

"That decision is a work in process. That isn't any of your business either way." Foop threw his notebook down and crossed his arms. "I know what I like, and Hiccup and I finally found something we agree on. I count it as a victory. I've made my choice. It's you I worry about, Poof."

He got a tired smile for that one. "Aw, you do care."

Foop ignored him. Taking up his notebook again, he flipped towards the end. "Look. Here are the sketches I did with Goldie and Kelsia when they were going to shed. They came to me, obviously because they realized I am the smartest and most artistically-talented anti-fairy to have been born since, well, it doesn't even matter, because it was before recorded time. That's why they came to me when we were talking designs on the school bus one day."

Poof frowned at the notebook, shifting his wings along his back. "That's, uh… some really detailed Goldies you've got there."

"Aren't they?" Foop pulled one end of his mustache. "I must admit, I did spend a considerable amount of time gathering research on her shape and movement before I put my thoughts into the clothing that would best accentuate her figure. You know… Having lunch break with her. Walking her from one classroom to the next. Sitting behind her in almost every one." He smiled. "Stalking her from the bushes. Sneaking up to her living room window one night I knew she'd be up late watching scary movies…"

"Dude, you have got to get over her. She's not into you."

Foop dropped his hands to his lap. His scowl fell back into place. "Oh, because I'm sure she's so much more into sickly sweet purple prunes who are currently spewing their guts all over the place. Anyway." He tapped the page with the end of his pen. "Look. Goldie has her golden sweater with its one darker stripe, and her brown skirt. That's eye-catching without also being a clashing disaster. Kelsia has shorter sleeves and real, actual pants. She wears all black- it's a classic. So the question is, what look is Fairy World's oh-so-adored celebrity going to be showing off? And _don't_ say 'purple shirt with yellow sleeve cuffs'."

Poof sighed. Several of his fingers disappeared from the edge of the basin to dangle beside his leg. "Theeen I give up. My head hurts. I can't really think in this condition. You can do the work for me."

Foop rose in a huff. "Well, maybe I will. Enjoy being sick all by yourself."

"Did you know my Mama thought about naming me Dusty?" Poof asked through another yawn. "It was going to be after my grandfather… but she said it hurt too much or something at the time. You could've been Anti-Dusty."

Foop scratched his cheek, wrinkling his brow. "Could've been, I suppose."

"Hey, Foop?"

"What?"

Poof clenched his eyes, teeth, and fingers all at the same time. His wings trembled against his back. "You're smart, right? You always do best with the biology stuff, and you read books and all that."

"Of course. As I believe I've already made clear, I'm the most brilliant baby in the entirety of the cloudlands, not only since I've been alive, but since there has ever been. Even my father swears it's true, even when he isn't mind-controlled." Foop paused. "Why?"

Two seconds of pause. Then Poof raised his eyes. "Do you think… I'm going to grow up to be a pixie?"

" _What?_ " Foop stopped scratching. He stared for a second, then shook his head. "Poof, we both know perfectly well who our respective parents are."

He squirmed. "No, really. My mama wrote a song about it once, pixies and stuff. You're an Anti-Fairy. You can hear the magic moving through my lines, right? It twirls kind of funny. I don't… I don't breathe like all the other Fairies do. I breathe like a pixie."

Foop hovered on the tips of his toes, his ears pricked forward. Sure, he couldn't see the infamous magic lines that allowed Seelie Courters like his counterpart to breathe directly from the energy field, but when he listened, he realized that… Poof was right. There seemed to be a… sputter in what he drew, compared to when he'd listened to other Fairies. He'd never really paid attention before now, but he could visualize the way the magic twisted and spun above Poof's head before slipping through all his pores.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "Only baby pixies can grow up to be pixies. You'd have to be born as a hexagon and look identical to the rest of them. The Head Pixie would have torn you away from the only parents you'd ever known for your third birthday."

Poof nodded without comment and closed his eyes.

Back at his desk, up on his knees in his big black mesh chair, Foop broke out his new colored pens. He tapped the end of the purple one against his teeth. The only thing better than being Fairy World's favorite celebrity kid had to be being the one to design the long-term look of Fairy World's favorite celebrity kid. The only question was, what sort of outfit would really suit his counterpart?

Agh. This would be so much easier if Poof was here beside him, willing to contribute and pass him snacks like Goldie and Kelsia did.

"Okay. Hiccup, stop me if you think I'm getting too crazy. I'm thinking…" Foop inked in a shirt collar, then a torso. He paused. His thumb stroked down the length of his pen. "Long sleeves. Do you think long sleeves? True, his family are currently residing in California, which is rather warm, but they won't stay there forever. When he's at school, he's up here all the time in the cold. Curses." He drummed his claws. "He's a celebrity. He's really got to nail that celebrity look. I want to design him something that he can wear without overheating, but without freezing to death either. That's important."

"Why not both?" Hiccup asked, taking the pen for himself. "Ah, remember how I designed an undershirt for us? It's black with long sleeves, and is underneath our nice blue sweater vest. So what if…" He emphasized the collar, thickening it out and making a sweeping motion back over the shoulder to suggest a hood. "Poof wore some sort of light shirt like this one? It could have long sleeves. And he can wear white underneath, with sleeves that are short, yes. Then he could take off the top shirt if he gets too hot."

Foop caught his breath. "Oh, Puck, that's brilliant. There are so many things you can do with a hoodie anyway. You can tie it around your waist, or… or… you can wear it. Yes, a celebrity can show off loads of different styles with just a simple hoodie."

"And it comes with a hood in case he wants to cover his face when he's out in public."

"Or around another freckled gyne. It's perfect. But what sort of design do we put on its front? Perhaps a star? A moon? A cow?"

Just as Foop was considering _poof_ ing in a book of sewing patterns and designs for inspiration, his cell phone began to jitter on the bed. An incoming call? He checked the screen. Apparently, he'd gotten an influx of messages while he was busy cleaning the floor, or sitting on the floor with Poof or something. The RA must have finally approved him to use the connection for the new semester. He ignored them for now and accepted Finley's incoming scry.

"Finley?" He squinted. "What in… Where are you?"

Wherever he was, it was outdoors. It looked like… he might be outside one of Fairy World's actual grocery stores. He hefted a plastic bag in his fist. "Yeah, man, I got the stuff."

"Where are you?" Foop clenched his claws in his hair. "Did you somehow leave the Spellementary premises? I thought you couldn't fly."

"Well like… You told me to go forage and stuff? So I hopped one of the shuttle buses…"

"You took the bus? In public? Surrounded by g _rrr_ own magical creatures who are all dropping their offspring off at school this time of year before they begin to look for holiday deals with the universal return of the starships? Finley-!" Foop pinched his ear as Hiccup stirred in the back of his consciousness. "Gray Tuesday is _right_ around the corner. Do you want to get kidnapped and used as a teleport link directly to the Pixie World warehouses again this year?"

Finley pushed his shades further back in his slick hair. "Okay, I'm starting to think that maybe you don't, see, actually like me? You're giving me a lot of mixed messages, and I don't really swing that way. You've really gotta spell stuff out with me. Did you want the groceries or not?"

Foop made the attempt to pinch his temples with his thumb and forefinger. His hand was too small to reach both sides of his head. Well. Not after tonight, it wouldn't be.

"Look, just get the foraging thing done and get back here. We will talk about the campus store another day. Poof could be shedding any minute, and then it's hunger rampage time."

"Oh!" Finley perked up immediately. "So this is like Pac-Man! Yeah, so I totally got this. See you in a shake, bro."

The call ended. Foop placed it beside his notebook with a sigh. "I worry about that man."

"The key to not being disappointed with others is to keep your expectations low," Hiccup chimed in. "For example, I am amazed that a, hmm… a busy bee like him was able to remember that the bus was making rounds by the grocery store today. I don't think he gets out of Pixie World much."

"Mmhm." Foop picked up his purple pen again, massaging his cheek. A clump of fur came away in the process. He flicked it into the little trash can by his desk. "Now, what would be an appropriate design element to afflict Poof with for potentially the remainder of his childhood, depending on what the public expects him to wear and Fairy culture not actually encouraging much mental or personality growth until high school?"

"Would bright white polka dots work? They might bring out the color of his shirt underneath."

"Spots would be interesting, but I'm not sure if- Ooh, I know."

The design would be basic, but effective. Foop scratched in more lines, zigzagging his pen up and down until he had colored in the whole shirt. Then, adjusting his orientation, he moved at a different angle. At last, the quick design completed, he sat back in his chair.

"And, finished. What do you think?"

It would be purple like Poof's hair, of course, with darker stripes running horizontally across his chest. The collar would be blue. It was a good mirror of Foop's collar that way, which would be purple, and that's what he was going for. When people looked at Poof, they ought to remember him- both as outfit designer, and a celebrity's counterpart. The sleeves would be bare of stripes because… that's just how they were, and they would not include yellow sleeve cuffs.

"It's awfully simple," Hiccup said.

"I don't exactly have endless time to mess around with it."

"Why? Poof can always change it later."

"You wouldn't understand. Your first shirt design is…" Foop tilted his notebook. "It's something special. A lot of Fairies carry such a look through to adulthood. It's a cultural thing we do. You know, own multiples of the same outfits all the time."

Hiccup cleared his throat. "Poof said he wanted yellow."

"He'll change his mind once he sees this brilliance."

"He already told you what he wanted to look like when he's older."

"Poof doesn't know what he's saying."

"He's a celebrity kid, and he's expected to keep up with the fashion trends."

Foop rolled his eyes and reached for the other side of his neck. "That's his day job. I've just designed him something he can wear around the house."

"Purple may not match well with his green saucerbee jacket if he really does try to get on the Poofypants team someday. I can see why he wants yellow. Yellow is nice."

"Of course _you_ would think so. I refuse to work in yellow. It's much too happy. Even Goldie's sweater is more of a golden orange."

Hiccup shrugged. "All right. I suppose I like it well enough."

"I do too," Foop agreed, but then paused. "Where have I seen this design before?"

"It was just up here in our head before you drew it."

"No, no, it seems familiar. Curses." He fingered his usual corner. "Could I have stolen this off someone without realizing it?"

"Maybe you saw it in a book of famous people."

"When do I ever read books about famous people?"

Hiccup shrugged a second time and rose from the chair. A shower of loose fur fell from his clothes in the process. "Well, you can't copyright a design. Everyone is allowed to wear anything they want. Even if it does look familiar, no one will get mad at you."

"Yes, perhaps, but I'm trying to start a new trend, or something. I don't know." As he waved his bottle to switch off the lights and left the room, Foop couldn't resist stroking his goatee with a frown. "I was hoping to put my name on this look, but my fear of being attacked for plagiarism is currently winning out over my desire to be praised at all times and in everything I do. Poof? I'm coming in."

"Wait…"

Foop paused, his hand resting against the wood. "Knock knock?"

Poof moaned softly, but Foop's sharp ears were able to pick up the words, "I'm out."

He was out.

Foop shrugged at Hiccup, then turned his back. In that way, he reached behind him to turn the bathroom handle and push open the door. The light was pale. The floor was cold. After taking a yellow towel from its post on the wall, he slowly walked backwards until, halfway to where he thought was Poof's side, his heel came down on something with a crunch. It definitely wasn't tile. It wasn't a body part either. It was crispy and flaky, and broke apart at his touch. His mustache twitched.

"What was that?"

Poof let out a groan. The shifting of his hands suggested he was curled in a ball, holding his stomach. "S'okay. Didn't hurt. That's just my shed skin."

"Uh, right. Well. Ah, here you go." Foop partially tossed and partially dropped the towel over his counterpart. He waited several seconds for Poof to cover himself in case his aim had been off before he turned around to face the lump on the floor. "Well, come on. Let's see how you look."

"I'm coming. I'm coming." The towel rustled for a moment, and then out poked Poof's head. Foop blinked. He was, well…

… He was really big.

The last time Foop had laid eyes on his counterpart, Poof had been the size and shape of a soccer ball, a little bigger than the measurements for the average fairy, him being a gyne instead of a kabouter and all. Now, the soccer ball measurement would be more accurate to describe just his chest. His cheeks were full of pale brown freckles. They were even sprinkled above his nose, still as small and round as it had ever been. His single purple hair had thickened into a whole bunch of purple hairs, all in thick, distinct curls like tentacles around his ears. His hair didn't gleam with the shine of his mother's, but instead carried the dull softness that Uncle Cosmo's showed. He hadn't quite lost the baby fat around his face, and it even showed in the slight protruding of his chin. Foop didn't want to lean forward for a look, but he found himself wondering if Poof had retained a round belly too.

He actually looked… okay beneath the pale yellow of the towel.

Foop cleared his throat. "Um. How do you feel?"

Poof reached behind his shoulder and scratched at his skin. "Itchy. Peeling. Sore. Like I got bitten by a thousand sprites before you rammed me with a spike-covered shield from behind. How do I look?"

"Like a pudgy, dumb, purple puffball."

"Ha, ha. Give me my clothes."

Foop held up his notebook. "This is what I was thinking-"

"No talk. Just clothes." When Foop shot him a look, Poof forced a smile that showed the gap between his front teeth. "I'm in a lot of pain right now, so please? My goals: Get dressed. Get food. I'm starving. Party hard tonight."

Foop waved his bottle without another word. The hoodie he and Hiccup had designed appeared on the floor in a neatly-folded stack, along with the short-sleeved white shirt and a set of black pants. Six black shoes were set off to the side; Poof could pick from what he had. "See if you like what Hiccup and I drew up for you. I don't know about the size, or the slits for your wings in the back. If you need anything changed, just say so. I get a lot of fees waived because I'm here on Unseelie scholarship, you remember."

Slowly, Poof reached out for the white shirt. Foop turned his back and hummed a few notes to himself, occasionally smoothing down the front of his onesie. Speaking of which, Poof's must be…

… He decided to hold off on looking. Instead, he scratched a sharp itch between his wings as best he could with his short arms and the soft nipple of his bottle.

"Do you still feel like throwing up?" he asked over his shoulder.

Rustling suggested Poof was putting on his clothes. "Nah. I'm better now, just really cold. I get the whole 'nymphs need blubber' thing now. Heh heh… Look at that. I'm officially a juvenile, and you're still just a pup. What time was that opening social party supposed to start again?"

"Oh, five minutes ago, I'm sure. I made an attempt to get here early, but…" Foop shrugged. "Time zones."

"Time zones," Poof agreed, a cheery note in his voice. The next rustle sounded like cotton with a hint of polyester. That's what the hoodie was made of. Poof fell silent as he presumably pulled it over his head, but when he popped his face out and started to push his arms through, he said, "You know, the cool kids always show up late to parties. You wanna head down with me?"

Foop moved his bottle lower down his back as he scratched. "It'll probably take a week before you can fly with those new wings. I guarantee you're more top-heavy than your legs can handle right now."

"Yeah, but…" Poof flapped out the dark denim pants Foop had left him with. "There's food down there, and I'm hungry. Besides, it's a party- I've gotta go. And Goldie will probably be there. I wanna show off these new muscles."

Foop didn't try to hold back his snort. "Muscles. Poof, your head is full of cloudfluff right now. I doubt you can even stand on those little legs."

He was startled by the dragging sound behind him. Turning around, Foop found Poof pulling himself across the floor towards him. His fingers closed around Foop's ankle. He stuck out his lower lip. "You'll help me get down there, right? You know if you don't, I can always just _poof_ myself. But if you do it, it's freeee."

"Get off." Foop shook his foot and stepped away, still rubbing behind his back. Poof dropped his head onto his arms. "Seriously, you can't be, well… serious. You just shed, I'm about to shed. A party is out of the question."

"Well, you can shed first, and then we'll go." Poof stared at the ceiling, his hands folded over his stomach. "Hey. Why do you have black hair when your parents both have blue hair?"

"That's an ancient Anti-Fairy secret."

"But it's like, all the other Anti-Fairies have black hair, and then your parents are some of the only ones who don't. Kinda sketchy, don't you think so?"

"That is a stereotype." Foop gave up on scratching with the bottle and returned to his claws instead. It felt _so_ good to really dig them into his skin. "Anti-Fairies can display a variety of natural hair colors, just as you Fairies can. For instance, beside black, there are various tints and shades of blue, purple, white, silver, and sunset."

"Sunset?"

"It's recessive."

"Huh." Poof stretched his arms. "Oooor… Maybe Anti-Cosmo's not really your dad. Your real dad could have black hair. Think about it." Poof held up his hands and made a rainbow motion. "You could have a whole nother dad you don't even know about. Your parents could be total cheaters."

Foop nudged him with his foot. "Poof, you realize you just implied your own parents were unfaithful when they had you."

"Oh, right. And I guess it was my dad who had me and your mom who had you, so… Yeah." Poof placed his hands on his knees and, on shaky legs, pulled himself up to his feet. His wings spread out behind him with a flap. Boy, was he ever tall. His hands had gotten fat. His arms were chubby, and yes, there was that tubby roundness around his stomach. Those wings alone could crush an anti-fairy pup if only they could clap shut. "Phew," he said. "Poof to Houston mission control, legs are operational. We have liftoff."

"Who is Houston?" Foop muttered. His neck had started to scab and peel. An awful lot, in fact. All this standing was really wearing on his feet too. He stretched his arms towards the ceiling. His ears flicked. His spine adjusted position with a satisfying pop. Rhoswen's chisel, were his eyelids ever heavy. He rubbed them both with his thumb and forefinger, shaking out the sensation of cobwebs clinging like tree sap to his wings. Foop leaned his cheek against his palm and groaned behind his fangs.

When he opened his eyes again, his vision had gone bleary with exhaustion. Poof arched his eyebrows, then let his gaze wander back down to the six shoes he hadn't tried on yet. His stomach gurgled. He stuffed his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, which looked a little pinker in this light than Foop had planned for. He cleared his throat. "So, about that party tonight."

"Poof, we went over this. Who knows when I might shed? For the next several hours, I can't go anywhere people might be watching me." Foop shivered all over, flapping his hands until he swore his bones rattled. Then he did the same to each of his feet in turn. "Hooooly _smokes_ , it is _freezing_ in here!"

"Uh, Foop?"

" _What?"_

"… Just look down."

He did. After gazing down a long stretch of bare chest, bony knees, and lengthy legs, he found himself surrounded by heap after heap of pale blue fur. Fat bundles of it clumped together, spreading out from his feet all the way over to where Poof's discarded baby skin lay, still untouched and blanketed by the remaining threads of a purple onesie off to the left. Mixed among the hairs were dozens of weird strips of peeled skin that he supposed must be the warm blubber (or "chitin" might be the better word) that had once made up his square exoskeleton. Some of the larger chunks were still reminiscent of his former shape. He'd torn straight through his old clothes, ripping them in the back with a much stronger set of wings than he'd anticipated.

Foop let his eyes slide behind him back through the bathroom door, even though he knew what he'd find. A whole trail of fur and shed skin patches led through the beaded curtain into the living room, and presumably from there back to his own bedroom. He paused mid-scratch, his arm stretched so far over his shoulder that his fangs were practically embedded in the crook of his elbow.

"Oh. So was that it?"

"That was it."

"Huh. Well, that was a bit little more anticlimactic than I was expecting."

Poof shrugged. "I feel like it was a little more dramatic for me. I guess shedding works differently for Anti-Fairies." A smirk picked at the corner of his mouth. He took his hands from his pockets and made finger wands. "Get it? Shedding?" When Foop didn't respond, he poked the anti-fairy in the chest. "Shedding? Because you shed your hair all over the place?"

"Stop it. Ow." Foop slapped his counterpart's hands away. His legs shivered beneath him. He stretched his arm out for the wall. His other hand grabbed the rail that had once held the yellow towel, now discarded on the floor. "Oh, good smoke. My wings are barking. Could you offer me a little privacy like a normal person now? The show's over. I'm not entirely decent right at the moment. And by the other definition, apparently neither are you."

"I wasn't looking," Poof insisted with another roll of his eyes.

"How you can even see anything underneath that shaggy mess on your head is beyond me. You really need to consider tying those wild curls back." Foop leaned further to the right, making the attempt to stand on shaking feet. His toes had grown out extensively in preparation for the life of hanging upside down that was sure to follow. While they were long, Mother Nature hadn't exactly intended for them to be very stable. That's what shoes were for. He clenched his teeth. "Now, do you mind? I am trying to see myself in that mirror behind you."

Poof moved to better block his way. "Get out," Foop snapped, kicking at his shin. The movement almost toppled him, and he made a panicked grab for the towel rack with both hands. "Honestly, I don't deserve this."

"Come on, my wings are translucent. You can see through them."

"Move, you- you- Ugh. I'm too hungry and cold to think up proper insults! Get out of here."

Poof spread his arms and wings, but did so with his eyes closed and his gap-toothed grin showing. "I'm not looking."

"You can see me with your weird Fairy senses, and you know it! Now get… away!" Foop risked a grab for his counterpart's shoulder, even though it made him sway wildly on his newborn legs. Poof chuckled and straightened him out again.

"Aw, come on. What's the big deal anyway? We've got like the exact same body anyway. It's just that yours comes with fur."

"And yours comes with too much sweat, so let go of me." One final shove, and Foop abandoned Poof for the sink counter. It was short just like the one in his and Finley's side of the apartment, designed specifically for young Fairykind to wash up in anytime after their first shed. For the very first time, Foop found it to be his proper height. He grabbed the faucet and the wall, blinking through squinted eyes at his own reflection.

If it weren't for the black fur that made up his mustache and goatee, and his searing magenta eyes, he'd hardly have recognized himself. Well, his fur was still the same extremely pale blue tint as ever, but now his purple freckles were even more prominent than they had been back when he was a pup. True, his frame was a little thin, but that was only to be expected. He was an academic, not a man of muscle.

He had a face. With its own jaw. Foop traced his hand along it, marveling silently at the wonders of a working chin. He sounded out a few letters of the alphabet, pinching his cheeks with forefinger and thumb. For good measure, he moved his hand higher. He really _could_ touch both his temples at the same time!

And his hair! That F-shaped tuft of hair had morphed not into the shaggy coils that hung in Poof's eyes and tickled the back of his neck, but into two enormous curls of black. They sat prominently atop his head, nestled together between his fluffy, pointed ears. Foop traced his fingers over them and followed them all the way down. His hair was long enough that it reached below his cheeks and curled up in the back in two spirals like it had been licked by a hair-licking cow.

Satisfied, Foop turned his attention away from his hair and checked out his fangs by pulling his lips first one way, then the other with his fingers. Long, pleasant fingers with sharp black claws capping every one.

Poof leaned one elbow against the counter and pressed a hand to his rumbling stomach. "So? Like what you see?"

"The whole package. Of course, it still needs one more thing." Foop retrieved his bottle from the floor and ran it under the sink water to rinse off most of the hairs. Giving it a wave, he summoned the long-sleeved black undershirt and dark blue sweater vest with its purple trim, just as he had planned. "There. You can look all you want and bask in the glow of my charms, cottonpuff. Now, I'm perfect."

Poof turned so his reflection came into view in the mirror. He smiled. "Hey, Foop? Thanks for designing this for me. These clothes fit really well. You totally nailed it."

"Yes, well." Foop plucked at a stray clump of loose hairs on his throat and dropped them on the floor. "I'm admittedly conflicted about making this kindly gesture for my nemesis, so let's put a pin in this emotion for now and not go spreading it around quite so early."

Poof tugged at his collar. "I just want to say one thing. You know who this design reminds me of?"

Foop's fingers froze on his chest. Slowly, he turned to look at his counterpart again. "Do tell."

Poof's smile turned to a full-on grin. "Silly Stewart from 'Looky's Lunchbox'."

Poof's chuckling almost drowned out the noise of Foop beating his head against the counter's edge. He wrapped his arm around the anti-fairy's neck and hauled him away. "C'mon. Let's go catch us a party."

* * *

 **A/N** \- Butch said that Poof's original planned name was Dusty. That'll come back later. A few times.

Also, in the "77 Secrets of Fairly OddParents" revealed just before Season 6, Wanda did indeed sing a line of a country song that goes, "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be pixies!" which I think is a very intriguing piece of information due to the implication that one can "grow up" to be a pixie. Whether it's metaphorical or not, Wanda apparently wrote the song, so Poof probably worries about it. Especially since we saw H.P. tying in his magic lines back in "Open Your Eyes".

Breathing lines. I should've called them breathing lines.


	40. (114) Watch and Learn

_Summary:_ After Poof bails on Foop's tutoring lesson for Anti-Fairy ballroom, Foop and Anti-Marigold track him and Goldie down to teach them some cultural Anti-Fairy traditions.

 _Characters:_ Goldie, Poof, Foop, Anti-Marigold, Hiccup, Cosmo, Wanda

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Live For the Moment" / "Temptation"

 _Prerequisites:_ None

* * *

 **114\. Watch and Learn** (150,000 years post-series)

 _Year of Fire; Winter of the Dancing Sunset  
_

* * *

Goldie was above such petty acts as slamming a door in somebody's face, but either Foop didn't know that about her, or the events of today had soiled his trust in all Fairykind. He thrust his arm out to hold it open and pushed his way into the cabin, shaking snow from his wings and ears like a puppy. Didn't even look at her. Anti-Marigold followed, crunching through a handful of dry cereal. Her blue eyes flickered with their usual haughty smugness, but even so (or perhaps because of it), she lingered in the doorway long enough to offer her will o' the wisp counterpart a pat on the elbow.

"Let him pick a blue, sheila. Y'all owe him that much."

Foop whipped around. Ice crystals had frozen in his fur, making it stick out at odd angles, and his cheeks had flushed so pink that Goldie had to do a double-take to confirm that yes, that was Foop in control and not the soft-spoken Hiccup. He'd already dumped all his books and papers on the table behind the couch; now, he took a step towards her. The ends of his mustache twitched upwards simultaneously. The guy's eyes might hardly come up to her mouth, but Goldie couldn't resist the urge to lean away from him and offer whatever he wanted. His hand flew to the obsidian wand in the sheath at his hip.

"Where _is_ he?"

"H-he just popped out to get us some pizza."

"Poof? Pizza? You're joking. What happened to Mr."—Foop made air quotes with his claws—"I-Don't-Touch-Processed-Foods-Because-They're-Filled-With-Artificial-Chemicals-That-Clog-My-Lines-And-Redirect-An-Uncomfortable-Portion-Of-My-Magic-Share-To-My-Arch-Nemesis-Whom-I-Still-Refuse-To-Call-By-His-Adult-Name?"

"The pizza's for me, his parents, and their godkid. He brought plenty of his own stuff when we settled in here for the week. But either way, he went out to fetch something. Y'all know how darn stubborn he gets about not being out too long in the cold, so we were going to come in from the hill and have lunch. If we can lure his papa in, that is. Cosmo loves the snow." Steadying her hand against the doorknob, Goldie forced a smile. "Well, you look real cute in that scarf and hat, Anti-Poof. We're over 150,000 now, so it is Anti-Poof officially, isn't it?"

"It is, unfortunately. And normally I would argue with you there about my cuteness, but then again, this is coming from you. You simply can't be coaxed to see the flaws in me, can you, sugarpie?"

Anti-Marigold elbowed her in the ribs. "I knit him that scarf and hat."

Goldie sighed and shut the door. Ducking Anti-Marigold's lighthearted attempt to knock the crown from above her head, she followed Foop to the table and leaned over the back of the nearest armchair. "Can I get y'all anything? There are blankets and board games around. The family's out on the back slopes, if you should feel inclined to join them."

"Thank you, but I'll manage myself in here just fine." Foop yanked off his scarf and flapped it in front of the sizzling fireplace. It, and his jacket, went on the available hooks. As Goldie watched, he crossed the living area, went into the kitchen, and thrust open a window. Cold air zipped across the room. As he stuck out his hands, he said, "Funny. I didn't see Wanda as the wisp-loving type."

No, maybe not a wisp-lover. A wisp-tolerator, perhaps, and for now that was the best they could hope for. Goldie twitched her lip. "Poof introduced me to his parents all good and proper last month. Sure, Cosmo already dotes on me like a daughter-in-law and that's really not a surprise, but even Wanda is willing ta give me a chance to win her over."

"So they left the two of you in here to kiss and cuddle while they spend the day on the hill."

Goldie set one hand to her hip, fingers biting through her yellow sweater to her skin. Normally she tied a knot at its front so her tan stomach flashed, but common sense warned her even more than the cold weather not to let Wanda catch her dressing that way. Her huge wings beat twice, ruffling Foop's papers, before they stilled. "Until we turn fool enough to trigger your honey-lock, sweetie, that's entirely our business and none of y'alls'."

Foop snapped his head in her direction. "It's my business if your boyfriend _stands me up_ during tutoring hours to frolic about up here. Do you know how many pre-made tracking spells couldn't pick up any trace of him? Uncle Idiot's immune thanks to that stupid time key he swallowed way back when, and I didn't have Auntie Wanda's DNA. I had to sit down and run all the calculations to invent my own just to pin you down instead. Not the way I'd planned to spend my winter holiday, thank you. Whose idea was it to ditch me? His or yours?"

Goldie sat down on the couch, crossing her arms. "It's Poof's holiday too. His parents' latest godkid wished them a family trip. He just had to come."

"Oh, please." Foop pushed the window down until it clicked shut. "He's an Academy-bound fairy, beholden to the whims of no godkid. This was deliberate. Anyway, I saw Cosmo and Wanda out there as we passed over, and they're obviously one short for a _family_ trip, so you can give that pretense up. How long until he's back?"

"Make yourself comfortable, sugar. I fear it could easily be half an hour." Goldie wished Anti-Marigold would find some better way to keep entertained than hovering over her shoulder. It would only take one text to give Poof even just a heads up, but if she made a move for her phone on the glass coffee table now, her counterpart would call her on it. Now she regretted falling behind in her wand updates. One of them had probably included a keypad on the screen.

Through tired eyes, she watched Foop stalk around the front two rooms of the cabin. Couch. Stove. Fireplace. Sink. Armchair. Fridge. Couch. At least when Foop was frustrated, his patience kicked in. Anti-Cosmo might blast lamps off side tables or tear pillows to shreds, but the worst damages one could expect Foop to wreak in this state were holes in his pockets from clenching his claws and a deep line worn into the floor as a result of his obsessive, grounded pacing. And perhaps a quick visit from Hiccup if things really got out of hand. The wood creaked with every other step.

"Well, uh…" Goldie bit her lip. "Er, apart from the obvious, how has the tutoring been going, Anti-Poof? I haven't heard my Poof mention your name all that often as of late."

"I have straight five stars in every class, so it's clearly working out brilliantly where I'm concerned," he snapped.

Anti-Marigold kicked her feet up on Goldie's shoulders and tapped her crown with one claw. "Don't mind his tongue, sheila. These last two years've of our cohort's Anti-Fairy studies have run the gent straight into the ground."

"You don't say…"

"He'll be right in another season. By the way, hon." Her legs tightened, her knees squeezing Goldie's cheeks. "Notice anything diff about me since last time?"

Goldie twisted and looked her counterpart up and down. The tone of her voice brimmed with _I stayed out way past curfew and Mommy didn't catch me_ energy. Which was odd, since if Goldie remembered correctly, her mother was rarely sober enough (or around enough) to set a curfew for her two daughters anyway. Her usual black tank top and jeans had been exchanged for a purple pullover hoodie with a winged tiger on the front, and which was dangerously low cut even by Goldie's standards. Likewise, her shorts gave off the impression that she'd marked a line a few inches above each knee and then gone at the fabric with a weedpoofer while under sugary influence. An odd contrast with the falling snow outside, but then again, Anti-Fairies were bred for freezing weather. Despite the pullover, she'd tied Foop's bright green saucerbee jacket around her waist. It was torn and filthy, but that certainly wasn't new. Nor did the bold color go any better with the vaguely purple tint to her fur compared to the last time Goldie had seen her in it. Carefully, she said, "Are those new earrings? They, uh… match the stud in your lip quite nice."

Anti-Marigold frowned. The black and red moth wings rustled along her back. "Really? You don't see it?"

"Should I?"

"I just kinda thought it was obvious. Huh. Okay then. I see who got the observational skills between us. If I'd have to spell it out for you, just forget it, sheila."

The cabin door swung open as she finished. Goldie glanced over, half expecting to see either Wanda or Cosmo inches from diapause with their shivering godkid in tow. "Storm's picking up, but I'm back with the pizza," Poof said as he floated in, and then he spotted the Anti-Fairies and stopped. The door banged against the wall. The tails of his blue bandana whipped into his eyes. Snowflakes settled in his hair. "Oh. Foop. I wasn't expecting you to… find me."

"I can see that," Foop scoffed as he marched from the kitchen again. His fists trembled at his sides, and Goldie eyeballed both his wand and her own. He shut the door. "Now, what's the meaning of this, Poof? Spit it out."

Poof shifted the two pizza boxes in his arms, avoiding his gaze. "I like your hat."

"I knitted that," Anti-Marigold called. Poof glanced at her, then flinched hard and dropped his eyes to the pizzas again. A flicker in the energy field ran up Goldie's skin as his mental state shifted into quiet panic, and his aura signals from yellow to pink.

Still sparking, Foop followed his counterpart to the table behind the couch where Goldie sat sucking on her lip. "Well?"

"Something bothering you, Foop?"

"You can't just _posé un lapin_ and expect me to let that go easily."

"Well, the gang invited me out," the fairy muttered. He dropped the pizza boxes and pulled out a slice laden with pineapple chunks. This, he set on a paper plate before wiping his fingertips on his parka. "Don't look at me. I thought you were staying with Anti-Goldie, and I don't know your number of your personal crystal ball since Cavatina-"

" _Don't._ Say his name. They can hear you. They always know." Foop paced another circle, tugging on one of the two main curls on his head. His claws snagged. "It's a miracle I don't get throttled by his mother every time I walk into the Council meetings as it is."

Goldie closed her eyes.

"Uh." Poof picked up the paper plate. "Anyway. I thought you were in Anti-Fairy World? We both know you don't get cell service there. Not even pixies get cell service in Anti-Fairy World without abra-bats. So… I thought you'd check my room, then figure out I wasn't around and you'd leave me a note that we could reschedule."

Foop grabbed a slice of pineapple pizza too. "And do you ever reschedule? Of your own volition? Poof, I'm being completely serious. This is the third time in six weeks you've dodged me. Your final is in a month. Are you trying to fail this semester? Do you even care?"

Poof knit his brows. "Not really. I only need a three-star average to play saucerbee."

Goldie winced. Foop slammed his hand on the first pizza box, brandishing the slice like a slimy sword. "If you fail your _Anti-Fairy Ballroom_ class with an _anti-fairy_ as your roommate and known tutor, how badly is that going to destroy my reputation?"

"Hey, if you're so worried about it, then here." Poof grabbed a purple notebook from on top of the bookshelf and tossed it at Foop (Foop, who was still holding his pizza, made no effort to catch it, so it skidded off the table). "You can finish my write-up for me. Then you won't have to nag me so much _or_ risk your good name."

"That's not how this works. Dear Rhoswen, you're infuriating! I could just… just…"

His cheeks were flushed, his ears were twitching horribly, and a certain haunted look kept flashing across his face. Abandoning her phone on the coffee table with the empty hot chocolate mugs and breakfast dishes, Goldie stood and came behind Poof to run her hands up and down his arm. "Boys, let's see if we can't work out some nice understanding between us. Now, Poof. You know, you really oughta apologize for that nasty way you ran out on poor Foop like that. He's only bitter because he cares, sugar, and he's sure come a long way to find us."

"Sorry," he mumbled to the floor. He handed her the plate with the pineapple slice. "Next time, _I'll_ leave the note saying we should reschedule."

"And Anti-Poof, why-! Shame on you for hollering at Poof the very second he's come in from braving the snow to bring us some pizza during winter holiday. I do believe y'all owe him an apology of your own."

"Forget it, blondie." Foop stuffed his own slice in his mouth and turned his attention to his sauce-stained claws. "I'm not interested in making nice with the soda-loving hippie."

"I don't drink soda," Poof said coolly, and Foop sniffed.

"You take peppermint. That's what it was, then."

Poof's fingers twitched. "Look, some people pace when they're stressed, and I like candy canes. I've been trying to quit and you know it. Can you drop it already?"

This was going nowhere but down. Thinking fast, Goldie stepped out from behind Poof and took up Foop's hand with her free one. "Oh, doll. You can't manage just one apology? Not even for me?"

The anti-fairy hesitated, running his thumb across her knuckles. The apple bobbed in his throat. He looked away. "Fine. I'm terribly sorry for yelling at your boyfriend when he's being a stupid imbecile. I ought to remember that between the two of us, I'm the one who got the b _rrr_ ains."

Anti-Marigold, still sitting on the back of the couch, raised her hand. "So if I acted cute as whenever I wanted something, would y'all start doing nice stuff for me?"

"Either way, we're all here now, and I brought the books. The write-up assignment was so simple I had mine finished before holiday, but may I remind you, _Tarrow dance final in a month._ " Foop looked back and forth between both Fairies, who had gone stiff and silent. "How are you faring with that anyway? Last I checked in, you were arguing over the difference between Dayfry's step and the rabbit's foot."

Goldie and Poof remained stiff and silent, Goldie with her pizza slice in her mouth. Anti-Marigold, still clinging to the back of the couch with her legs, leaned over and draped her arm around Foop's shoulders. She lifted a hand to her mouth and faux whispered, "I don't think they've practiced outside of class at all, mate."

Foop's nose twitched. "However do you stand existing in the same room as yourselves? Right then!" He clapped once, sharply, loud. Goldie jumped, though Poof continued hovering with a scowl where he was. "The ceiling's plenty high enough. We'll clear a space here and get on with it. There's no better time for getting things done than holiday."

Goldie, still chewing, took a step towards Poof. Her counterpart flicked her wand and (after slapping her wand with the heel of her hand when it stalled and sputtered) pushed all the furniture several paces closer to the walls. Poof held one finger Foop's way.

" _Eeee_ xcuse us for a second."

With that, he took Goldie's elbow and guided her through the kitchen and all the way back to the bathroom. Good plan. Not only was it against Da Rules for anyone to _poof_ into indoor waste relieving areas uninvited, but it was also far enough away, hopefully, that even Anti-Fairy ears wouldn't pick up on their muttered conversation. Once inside, Poof dropped her arm and flopped against the wall. For the first time since he'd strolled into the cabin, his wings stilled.

"Okay. Did he tell you _anything_ about how he found us?"

Goldie shrugged. She took another bite of pizza, and after she'd swallowed, she said, "He told me the default tracking spells were struggling, so he went and invented a new modifier."

"Of course he did. He's like a virus- every time I find a new way to block him out, he just gets stronger." Poof took her hands and checked her arms over. He clucked his tongue. "Geez, he didn't hurt you, did he?"

"Not a lick," she assured him. She moved one hand to his cheek. "He was awful upset, but he only paced back and forth like he does. I sat on the couch."

"Well, that's good. I never would've forgiven myself if he was chasing after me and then found you instead and decided to, I dunno, force himself on you or something? You're not worth pizza." He paused. "Wait, that doesn't sound right. Uh. I just mean, going for pizza isn't worth it if you got hurt. You're not worth anything. Erm, wait…"

"I know what ya mean, hon." Idly, Goldie let her thoughts run back to Foop. She'd be lying if she said she didn't find him sort of… interesting, but she hardly considered that Rhoswen syndrome. He was a drake, and drakes were her specialty. Since she'd already staked his counterpart as part of her territory, it seemed only natural to daydream of comparing them. Either way, the thought of Foop approaching her with the offer of frisking about while they waited for Poof to show made her smirk. She'd almost pay just to see him do it with his accent and a completely straight face.

Poof slid his headband down his face and pressed it to his lips. "And he brought Anti-Goldie. Why did he bring Anti-Goldie?"

Goldie shrugged her wings. "Well, she _is_ his girlfriend…"

"No, that's Anti-Coriander, officially. That doctor-in-training who's usually in scrubs that his parents parade about every time they swing by to have lunch with mine? She's a Leaves year and he's a Breath, and it's supposed to mean true love or something according to their star charts, I dunno." Unsatisfied, Poof fidgeted with the zipper on his coat. "Anyway, that's who everyone says he's supposed to be with. The Anti-Fairies are already calling her their princess. Anti-Goldie's just his friend. I think." He clucked his tongue again. "But her eyes used to be red, you know. They're bright blue now."

"They're…" Goldie's own eyes, equally bright blue, widened as his words clicked in. She felt her cheeks crimson, and the mirror confirmed it. "Oh my dust, you're right. She must've got it off him. Did _we_ do that?"

"Well, not if he didn't say so. We've been careful, right? Or am I missing something? We were like, super careful. The most careful people. There's no _way_ they should've honey-locked." He looked at her pointedly. "So he doesn't know?"

"Um. He didn't _say_ if he knows we did it, but he is pretty smart-"

"If he didn't say it, he doesn't know. Trust me on that- we're both bad with secrets. Still, _ugh_. Give me a freaking core attack with something fun like Christmas right around the corner, why don't you? I mean, with Finley acting as dominant gyne in our cohort dorm, I'm subordinate so it's not like I can even get pregnant anyway, but still I thought for a second he might… I… I…" Poof clenched his fingers in his hair, squeezing his eyelids shut. "Dust, I need my peppermint so bad. I've gotta take a puff."

Goldie stepped forward and touched her fingers to his chest. "Sugar, you want to quit, remember?"

Poof sneered at nothingness, focusing on an empty point in space over her head as he rubbed his hand up and down her back. Each freckle on his face gleamed like a soft brown star. "Yeah, well. Let's go face the music. Foop's right. We haven't been practicing that dance. And if I fail this year, Mom will prob'ly clip my wings."

When they returned to the living area, they found Foop and Anti-Marigold beneath the kitchen archway, leaning their heads together. So deep in whispered conversation were they, Poof skimmed all the way to the table to grab Goldie another slice of pineapple pizza before they jumped and jerked around.

"The dance," Foop blurted. "We were just talking about the Tarrow dance. Let's get on that. You two can sit there on the couch. Yes, there's good. Kel- I mean… Anti-Marigold, if you would join me in my demonstration?"

She didn't move. "Y'all said I wasn't gonna have to dance."

Foop curled his lip. "That wasn't meant to be taken literally."

"Well, it was."

"I deliberately went out of my way to pick you up when you knew perfectly well I was heading out here to help them with their Tarrow. Where did you think this was going?"

"I dunno? Y'all wanted to hang out? Have someone watch your back if y'all switch up or otherwise go wandering this messy planet in the mid of a snowstorm?" Anti-Marigold leaned against the curve of the arch. "Aw, mate, y'all both know I hate when this stuff's in front of people. Shouldn't Anti-Coriander be doing it with you?"

With a warning glance at Poof and Goldie that prompted both of them to drop their eyes to their laps, Foop lay his arm around Anti-Marigold's shoulder and turned their backs to the couch. "Kelsia," Goldie heard him murmur, but the rest was lost.

"So," she said, turning to Poof. "That Lance-A-Lotta pizza, huh? Talk about places that deliver to genie lamps and wisp burrows, but not to Delkian mountaintops when the weather report threatens snow."

"Hey, I'm just glad they have this many chains away from Earth and Fairy World. Okay, I'm _so_ not trying to be biased, but it doesn't even look that good." He reached for another piece and held it out to her. "Look how burned it is on the bottom. It's so stiff, it hardly flops."

"Really?"

Poof flapped the slice up and down three times, then froze as pineapple and a glob of sauce landed on the couch near her leg. Goldie stifled a giggle. Wiping it away with her hand, she said, "If it's that bad, why do you keep buying it?"

"Because they're cheap and I was hungry and impatient to get back," Poof insisted. He dropped the slice back in the box and grabbed for the fruit bowl instead.

Goldie rolled her eyes. "Sugar, you're always hungry. When we had our first real kiss, you stopped in the middle of it to-"

" _No_. Don't remind me." Poof lay a finger over his lips and got up on his knees to reach the bowl. "Listen, bossy lady. Saucerbee, magic, and always flying instead of walking takes a lot of energy out of me. I get hungry fast. And when you coat your lips with that glossy fruit stuff, it makes me even more hungry."

Anti-Marigold's voice cut through then with a hissing, "Oh, and I bet y'all think we'll just stroll up willy-nilly to the Castle without anyone noticing I'm a lowly anti-wisp gone iris. Which, by the way, _thanks_."

Out of the corner of her eye, Goldie watched Foop's hands go from supporting her counterpart beneath the wings to clasping her shoulders. His muscles tensed, but they relaxed again before he could decide to shake her back and forth. He chose to shake his head instead and leaned forward to murmur something else in her ear.

"Thanks," Goldie said, quickly turning away and grasping her boyfriend's knee. Poof perked up at once. He swallowed his bite of apple.

"Thank me for the what now?"

"Letting, er, Anti-Poof help us with our dance this afternoon. I know this isn't what you had planned."

"Good old Foop," he said, with neither sarcasm nor sincerity in his voice.

A blurring sensation like frozen candle wax began to trickle between her wings, humming with magic. Goldie glanced towards the anti-fairies again to find Anti-Marigold pressing her fingertips to Foop's temples. A green glow flickered around her wrists. After a very long silence, during which Goldie had no idea where to look, the anti-will o' the wisp released him.

"You got it?" Foop whispered, and Anti-Marigold twisted her lips into a smile.

"Easy as, mate."

Foop turned then suddenly, and Goldie threw her gaze in the direction of the bookshelf. "Terribly sorry," he said, "but then again, I'm not really. It serves you right for standing me up back at the dorm."

"Righto." Anti-Marigold mimed curtsying to him as she spoke, and Foop returned her gesture with a deep bow, but she addressed her words towards Poof and Goldie. "The Tarrow celebration is held annually in the Blue Castle courtyard on Naming Day afternoon, following the New Year trellis decorating, and it's like the epitome of grace, dignity, and refinement."

"All three of those words mean exactly the same thing," Poof said, finally shrugging out of his heavy parka. His wings buzzed.

Goldie arched her eyebrows. "Professor Cherrywell made it sound like-"

"For all his limited virtues, Cherrywell does make a thorough mockery of our traditions." Foop reached for Anti-Marigold's hand and walked her through a simple twirl and dip without breaking contact with Goldie's eyes. "Nothing about it is intended to be alluringly provocative or, as you Fairies put it, _sexy_."

The image of tiny Foop approaching her while Poof was fetching the pizza popped again into her mind, with him hovering there wringing his hands and asking in a no-nonsense way with his head tilted back to look up at her eyes, _"Would you care to be alluringly provocative and/or sexy with me?"_ Goldie bit her lip to keep her snickers in.

"There was seriously _nothing_ about watching those video clips that was sexy to you?" Poof asked, and Goldie elbowed him good-naturedly in the side. "Huh. Well, I guess we _are_ opposites."

"It does do a fair job of making us look hot," Anti-Marigold said from where Foop had dipped her and not yet pulled her up.

Foop huffed through his nose and did, then, yank her back to her feet. "It's a serious tradition to honor our cultural beliefs, and as long as I'm alive, I won't have it reduced to the degrading fantasies of hormonal adolescents. I for one think Cherrywell has no place teaching this class. My father could have done a better job of it - my _mother_ could have done a better job of it - but then again, I don't want to be one of _those_ Anti-Fairies. Goldie? Poof? Show us what you've planned so far."

The two Fairies glanced at one another. Poof scratched behind his neck. He set the apple core aside. They stood. Goldie extended her hand, and he took it.

"Uh, well, you just kind of…"

"Yes, it's a rather…"

Poof took two steps and immediately tripped over his ever-untied shoelaces. Recovering fast, he twirled Goldie under his arm. She executed that well enough, extending her hand low behind her as he let her dip. Poof balanced her weight by leaning back. Then he brought her towards him again, and she spun so her wings rustled across his chest. Easy. But as Goldie watched, his forehead scrunched.

"Wait. Uh, that's not right."

"That's a rather poor attempt at an anti-fairy courtship dance," Foop said patiently as the two untangled themselves. He'd put his hand up to block his mouth, ears down as though even with his fingers in the way, he didn't want his constant echolocation to pick up any trace of them.

"Different style," Anti-Marigold agreed, holding a knuckle in front of her own mouth. "Too much body contact. Here, we'll show y'all both again. C'mon, Nebs."

"Don't call me that." Still, he let her drag her by his limp wrist to the center of the room, where everything except the fuzzy rug had been cleared away.

"This is how y'all hold a guy in the second half of a basic Tarrow." Anti-Marigold interlaced her fingers with Foop's and held them between their chests. "And if y'all weren't paying attention in class, y'all'll want to now, because the earlier zodiac sign always leads. I betcha Cherry's gonna ask that on the test."

"Love is the universal leader," Foop said, staring hard at Anti-Marigold as she wrestled with his fingers. "And Leaves is at the end of the calendar cycle, meaning those born in that year always follow. So I really don't know why you're trying to dip me right now."

"Dunno, mate. Y'all were there?"

"Anyhow. As you can see, we release one hand and turn apart, I let go, she spins towards me again" - as Anti-Marigold followed his words, Foop stretched one arm across towards her waist and braced the other beneath her back to let her dip. "That's Tarrow. Her arm goes behind me, like so. Finish tying your laces, Poof, and then prove to me that you can actually follow along."

Poof held Goldie's hands again and followed each step as the Anti-Fairies talked them through. "Brilliant," Foop said as they completed the dip. "We actually might get out of here at a reasonable hour tonight after all."

"How delightful," Goldie murmured behind her teeth. Louder, as Foop's ears twitched in her direction, she said, "Your patience is appreciated. All these steps are ever so overwhelming. How _do_ you remember?"

"Careful study, the way I approach everything. It's really just the speed and flow we'll ensure you get down. Tarrow dances are fluid, confident, and energetic." Foop slapped the edge of his hand against his palm with each item he listed, his mustache twitching. "The true sign of mastery is evident from the very beginning, as each participant dances while facing apart. Just hoping you get randomly lucky and your partner will drag you along and pull your weight is not good enough. You have to be skilled as an individual to function as a team. Even without looking over your shoulder, your movements must be in sync at all times."

Anti-Marigold nodded and used her thumb to push up her crown. "Y'all take your marching orders from the music, mates. Always mind your cues. If your partner heads on to the next step without ya, it's all over."

Goldie and Poof glanced at one another again. Apparently, there really was a bit more to this Tarrow dancing than swaying your hips and acting flirty.

Foop twirled his wand and exchanged his dark sweater for a ruffled shirt that shimmered with gold sequins. It was the lowest-cut thing she remembered ever seeing him in, and Goldie started at all the plum-colored freckles across his chest. A white band wrapped around his waist, matching with his shoes and the puffy bow tie on his neck. His fist tightened around his wand for a long moment before he decided to sheath it. "Yellow," he said, "is the color of the Year of Breath. The amateur's mistake is to grab the first thing they find on the shelves and call that good enough. This isn't a real shirt I'm wearing now. It's actually a leotard. It's smooth and it won't come loose or wrinkle."

"A leotard?" Poof snapped his eyes away from the fruit bowl. "I was just going to throw on a dark brown jacket like that one I wore way back at the starshine cotillion."

"You won't if you want to pass dress code requirements. Seriously, did you even read the class syllabus?" Foop shook his head and waved a hand in Anti-Marigold's general direction. "See to Goldie. The catalog's in my stuff. I'll set some music, and we'll run them through our dance." With that, he grabbed his Skullphone and threw himself into the armchair against the wall.

"Sure thing, mate." Anti-Marigold rifled through the stack Foop had dropped on the table until she found the magazine in question near the bottom. This, she presented to Goldie. "Pick a style, and I'll model it so y'all can see how it looks."

It sounded like a good plan, but Goldie still winced when she sat on the couch and turned to the first page. The second, third, and fourth weren't much more promising. As Poof leaned over her shoulder, she peeked at her counterpart again. "My, do you have anything a bit less revealing in the…" She made a… rather vague gesture with her hand. "I don't think I'll feel near so self-conscious dancing if I can just be a bit more covered."

"Really?" Poof pointed at an image of a rhinestone-splattered dress with a thin strip of nothingness that ran from the chest down to the navel. "I think you'd wow the class in that. I mean, if I were a damsel, that's what I'd be dancing in."

Anti-Marigold tapped her teeth with one claw. "There's a neat one on the last page with lots of fringe dangling around the knee area. You might give that a try, sheila. It's got a cut that reveals the waist and runs up the torso, but only on one side and it's not really so bad. Also, there's only one sleeve and you'll have the other arm full exposed, so you may wanna wear a strapless bra that day- I can lend you one of mine. But hey. Close enough."

"How's this one?" Goldie asked, turning the catalog around. Anti-Marigold leaned forward, then nodded in a sagely way.

"That's a right nice one for covering up in the bust, but the back is exposed almost all the way down. A little prone to flashing tail, if y'all know what I mean. Not my type. But if you want it-"

"Never mind." Pressing her lips together, Goldie flipped to the end of the selection. The dress her counterpart had suggested was easy to identify with its waist cut and missing sleeve. Even if it _was_ mostly fringe down there and probably wouldn't cover much when she moved, it did reach pretty low. That would have to do. She showed the picture to Anti-Marigold, who nodded and outfitted herself accordingly with a _foop_.

"Year of Leaves," she said unnecessarily, tugging a misplaced elastic below her breasts. "That's green, green, and green again. But, you can range from the dark foresty stuff to seafoam and turquoise, so really, it's not a bad year to be born."

"I guess," Goldie muttered, watching her fidget with a couple of straps in the back.

Anti-Marigold followed her eyes. "Oh. The tricky part is, most of these dresses are designed for batty wings. We've gotta make a couple of adjustments here and there. Anti-Poof? Hey, Foop? Or Hiccup, if y'all decided to switch the second I wasn't watching. I'm gonna need one of y'all to get this last tie undone."

"In a minute," he called from his chair. "Keep in mind that your wand is also an option."

"Are you for real, mate? I already put it down, and now y'all want me to pick it up again? Crikey, chivalry really is dead."

"I can help." Poof hopped to his wings and circled behind Anti-Marigold. As the two of them worked to situate her four black and red moth wings properly, Goldie continued to study her counterpart's dress. It wasn't too bad, really… If only she didn't have to show so much hip. The gash curled from beneath the wings around to the stomach area. Anti-Marigold's light blue fur went well with the dark green of her dress, but imagining pale skin in its place made Goldie squirm her shoulders.

If it were only in front of Poof and Foop, she could handle that. They already liked her (Foop more than he would ever admit, she was sure) and teasing them could be a little fun. But what about the other kids in class? Even after a whole semester she hardly knew any of them by name, and if they discreetly snapped pictures of her wearing _that…_ Goldie fiddled with a loose thread of her sweater. Exposing a bit of stomach when she wanted to, well… that felt like a different stadium entirely from flashing all that leg.

Poof finished with Anti-Marigold and whirred back to the couch. "Well, one thing's for sure. My leotard should have a lot less ribbons and snaps to figure out."

"It does look awfully pretty on her, don't you think so?"

"Awfully." He reached his arm behind her. Goldie expected him to take her shoulder and pull her closer, but his fingers crawled instead across the table to the last two apples in the fruit bowl. His hand closed over a green one. "And even though you're her opposite, I'm sure it'll flatter you too."

Okay. Maybe food had his attention right now, but it was still a nice compliment. Goldie squeezed his hand in thanks. He bumped her knee with his own.

Quick, spicy music began to ripple overhead. It continued for several bars, then cut off abruptly. Foop returned, holding his Skullphone, which he passed off to Poof. "Press 'Play' when I request it. And don't touch anything else."

Poof saluted, hand raised near his cheek. With that, Foop and Anti-Marigold moved to the middle of the room and planted their feet. They checked one another over, then turned their backs. Wings bumped. After shifting accordingly, they each set their hands to their hips. Foop cleared his throat.

"All right, Poof. You may start it now." A smirk crept over his face. "I believe some video recording may be in order. I expect you'll be too enraptured to take notes."

Poof glanced at Goldie, who shrugged and grabbed her own phone from the coffee table to act as a camera. Then the music kicked in, fast and deliberate, and so did the dance.

 _You make me wallow, you make me wait. But I'mma show you we were meant to be fate._

As Foop had promised, neither of the pair looked at one another as they began. Yet they moved in sync, sliding towards their counterparts on the couch and then away. With each movement, they swung their arms and snapped their fingers. How they managed to do that with claws was another wonder altogether.

 _No one to stop us, no one to care. You'll try to catch me when I'm already there._

Anti-Marigold stretched her arm to the left, her hand facing back. Foop grasped it with his own and pulled her in front of him. When he let go, they continued without missing a beat, hips bouncing and hands upturned. Each sway sent the fringe on Anti-Marigold's dress flashing left and right. Their movements shifted from flowing side to side to forward and back. Bodies nearly touched like waves. Arms flicked up or sideways occasionally, always mimicked in the opposite direction by the other partner. "I can feel the crash and my future bloody nose already," Poof muttered in her ear. Goldie stifled a snort.

"I can't imagine we'll be going fast enough for that to be a problem."

He pressed his fingers to his face. "Still, if it does happen, I'd rather me than you."

"I think I'm more likely to trip over your leg."

"Seriously, how do they do that?"

 _Shamelessly,_ Goldie thought with a spark of jealousy as Anti-Marigold lay her palm against Foop's bare chest. He took her wrist and when he dipped her, she leaned back so far, her wings crumpled and her black pigtails scraped the floor.

 _I'd give you my soul if you would give me a day. Ain't no good luck charm can keep me away._

With a one-handed tug, Foop drew Anti-Marigold back to her feet and twirled her around. They split in opposite directions, facing one another and sliding backwards without breaking eye contact.

 _Douse me in clover and add a horseshoe. It's only with you gone that I could feel blue._

Anti-Marigold raised her hand near her shoulder, palm facing out; as Foop approached, he pushed against it hard enough to spin her around. He lifted his arms as she fell into place against him. As her hands ran down his torso, his traced through her hair. One fist back to the hip- two simultaneous spins- A cold, burning stone settled in Goldie's stomach as the anti-fairies, swaying again, moved apart. Abruptly, she ended the recording and let her phone fall to her lap. She'd always been the bright one. The focused one. When she didn't know the answer to a question, she referred to her notes. If her notes didn't cover the topic thoroughly enough, she turned to the library instead. With time and patience, an answer could always be found.

Dancing was a world she did not know how to navigate.

 _If we're green or we're pink, it don't matter to me. Don't need a star to decide- whether we're meant to be._

The Anti-Fairies had moved to the armchair where Foop had been picking out their music earlier. To Goldie's surprise, he sat down and flipped Anti-Marigold over his lap. As she came up, she yanked him from the seat and spun him towards the couch. Poof tucked his legs closer and Goldie pulled hers up entirely.

 _We were fated to dance, and this whole time it's been bliss. Would it be too much to ask if I borrowed your kiss?_

Foop crouched and laced his fingers together as Anti-Marigold twirled and sprang across the floor towards him. When her foot landed in his hands, he kicked off and launched her towards the ceiling. She backflipped. Metal flashed in her hand.

"Oh my stars, she's got a knife!" Goldie yelped, covering her eyes. But she couldn't resist peeking through her fingers. Foop's hand darted to the sheath at his left hip. Before anyone could stop him, he whipped out a silver blade of his own. It went up just as Anti-Marigold came crashing down. She had both fists around the hilt of her knife, aiming for the throat he'd exposed by tilting back his head. Poof shouted. Goldie fumbled for her wand. The anti-fairies collided and simultaneously burst into plumes of purple smoke. Both Poof and Goldie broke into a fit of coughing. When it cleared, Foop was holding Anti-Marigold above his head by just one hand, his palm flat against her torso. Awfully high near her chest, actually, although somehow, wings spread and his arm tilted slightly back, she managed to stay balanced. He turned his stare Poof's way.

"That," he said, plopping the anti-wisp to the ground again, "is a traditional Tarrow dance. You can switch the music off now."

"You oughta see his parents do theirs next year," Anti-Marigold supplied. With a click of a button, her knife withdrew inside the handle of her wand. She flipped it in her hand, then sheathed it. Then her gaze dropped to Foop's fingers, which hadn't come off her chest. "Uh. Anti-Wanda's quick as, and Anti-Cosmo does his whole 'Channeler of Sunnie' Water year thing with the bubbles. Beauty."

"My, does it hurt?" Goldie took her hands from her face. "Gettin' stabbed at that kind of speed? Regenerating?"

Foop tightened his lips in a grim manner. He started for the table, and Goldie couldn't help but blink when he dragged Anti-Marigold after him by the breast. Her counterpart didn't look any less stunned, but he didn't seem to notice. Returning his own blade to wand form, he _foop_ ed into his dark blue sweater vest and black undershirt again. "Oh, immeasurably. But, that's the beauty of the thing. Sacrifice in exchange for art."

"You get used to it," Anti-Marigold agreed. Her voice squeaked. "Uh… Nebula?"

"What?" He turned back towards her for the first time. "Something wrong? And seriously, let go of my hand. We're done."

"Um." Anti-Marigold tried to take a step backwards. Foop went with her. His eyes went down his arm. The blood went up in his cheeks. Hers too. "Whoops," she said. "I think we accidentally, uh…"

"Oh gods, you can't be serious." Foop tried to yank his hand away. It didn't work. Goldie had been too embarrassed to look closely, but when she glanced at them again, she realized that Foop's hand… wasn't… _there_ anymore.

Her hands shot to her mouth. Up to the wrist, Foop's hand wasn't _there_ anymore. It was literally fused _inside_ her counterpart.

"I told you! You shoulda done this with Anti-Coriander!"

"Oh, this is not my fault." Foop wedged his shoe against her stomach and wrenched his arm back once again. "Why didn't you wait to regenerate until I was done? I was leading. It was my right to be first."

"I _did_ wait!" Anti-Marigold inhaled. Her wings quivered. She bowed her head. "I thought I did. I don't- I don't like dancing. I _told_ you, mate."

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Foop's cheeks had turned bright pink by this point. "It's fine. Calm down. I can fix this. Kelsia, don't start face-leaking on me."

"Maybe y'all should call Anti-Coriander. She's good with surgeries-"

"I am _not_ telling Anti-Coriander about this."

Poof grinned like a pixie with animal crackers in his alphabet soup as the pair broke into an argument about which one of them was to blame. Goldie coughed into her hands. "Uh. Does this happen often?"

" _No!_ " they both screeched, turning even pinker. Goldie hadn't realized furry Anti-Fairies could flush like that. Foop seconded this with a furious, "Absolutely, definitely not!" He groped at the sheath on his right side for his wand, snagged it, flicked out the knife blade, and brought it to his wrist.

"Wait, I, uh…" Anti-Marigold deflected his hand. "We both know that ain't gonna work and it's just gonna hurt _both_ of us. We're sharing the body and we're sharing pain."

"Well, what do you expect me to do to correct this issue, then?"

"You _know_."

"No!" Foop picked up his pacing again, forcing her to stumble after him. He spat a few curse words that Goldie didn't recognize as he circled the fuzzy rug. "This is fine. We'll just hide it for the rest of our lives until they invent a cure."

"That ain't a real good option there, mate."

"Or you can let me cut the hand off. Just give it back to me the next time you regenerate. I'll get by without it. It's fine."

Anti-Marigold threw back her head and groaned, "That's not how regeneration works."

"How does it work, then?"

"Crikey, I dunno, mate. You're the nerd. All I know is that if we're not _in position_ before we try undoing it, we'll just keep regenerating in the same body from now on. It's gonna suck."

"Can we help?" Poof asked, starting to get up, but both Anti-Fairies whirled on him.

"No!"

Foop turned back to Anti-Marigold. "Brace yourself, darling. It may hurt us both, but I'm going to cut if off. It really is the best course of action." He paused, pursing his lips. His snaggletooth flashed. Then he lowered his voice. "Please."

Anti-Marigold shook her head, black pigtails lashing. "Foop, I ain't gonna stand here for twenty minutes as y'all saw off your hand and cry like a wee baby. Plus, what're y'all gonna tell your parents if you come home without it? Your Hiccup side can keep y'all's mouth shut, but the Foop side of ya sure as goshdarn can't. You _know_ ya'll'll let something slip to the High C. and C. and they're gonna think we… Y'know. The 'k' word."

He coughed. "Well, it would appear that we sort of _did_."

"You're disgusting." She narrowed her eyes. "And despite your nerves, y'all're enjoying this too much. Don't y'all lie ta me. I can feel the fingers wiggling."

His nostrils flared. The jutting fang flashed again. Foop drew himself up to his full height, which, while not very impressive, still put him firmly above Goldie's counterpart. "Well, I never denied I was hormonal, and it's not like you normally let me touch you there. Anti-Marigold, I'm a man of science and this is a rare opportunity. I'm curious."

Goldie finally felt herself blushing. Poof started to whistle and adjust his arms, looking anywhere besides… everybody.

"That's it." Anti-Marigold smashed her foot down on Foop's and hollered, " _Hiccup!_ Move your sorry tail out here _right_ now before I feed y'all to the dingo-bats! It's Kelsia."

Foop snapped to attention. Or more specifically, Hiccup did. Goldie recognized him instantly by the way his back straightened, and his ears flicked up. His fist loosened, dropping the wand to the floor with a clatter. The blade retracted. Hiccup came in grinning his signature cheerful grin, both fangs shyly showing in the corners of his mouth. The grin disappeared as he took in his surroundings. First the cabin. Then the Fairies. Then the arm. He looked down and cocked his head.

"Oh. Um. Anti-Marigold, I thought we agreed that if Foop lit your eyes, you'd let me kiff-tie with you before he did. Yes, I'm quite sure we agreed. In fact, I think you promised."

"Well, something came up." Anti-Marigold refused to look at him, directing her attention to the books on the table. "It's not exactly a real kiff-tie anyway. Just fix it."

"Right here?" Hiccup tilted his head the other way. "We can if you want to, but then Poof and Goldie will see. It's my understanding that doing that would embarrass you."

Goldie curled her toes. Oh. Uh. Oh dear.

Anti-Marigold's eyes squeezed shut. "I don't know, mate. Take me to the back someplace we're alone, an' let's get this over with. I've never done this before either. You're the prince. Take command or something."

Hiccup studied her with a thoughtful frown. "Surely you'd rather have Foop do this for you, though? Ah, I mean no offense, you see, and I know we have kissed before, but you're really not my type. I prefer bad boys."

"Uh." Poof raised his hand. "Is this going somewhere private? Should we step out?"

Neither Anti-Fairy appeared to hear him. "Hiccup," Anti-Marigold pleaded with her voice constricting, "it's just one li'l nibble, mate."

Hiccup poked the toe of his white dancing shoe into the ground. "Ah, please don't call me your mate. It suggests implications I don't care for, even though I do like you a little bit. This hurts my feelings. You _promised_ I could be first."

Anti-Marigold glanced over at the two Fairies on the couch, who had interlaced their fingers and were both watching, unmoving, silent. Her fur had always been tinted slightly purple, but now there was no argument about it. She raised one hand to cover her flushing cheek. "It didn't mean anything, Puck. It was an accident. Y'all can be first if we ever do it for real, I guess. Let's head to the back. Poof and Goldie Prime don't need to hear this stuff."

She made an attempt to move past him towards the hallway, but Hiccup kept his feet stubbornly planted, as though he'd clenched his toes in the fuzzy white rug through his shoes. "Ooh! I don't _want_ you to see my yarn. We're not that, ah, intimate yet, you see."

"Well, technically it's both our yarn right now. Come on. We're already like, sharing blood and magic the way it is. You could probs light someone's eyes like this." Anti-Marigold nudged him with her knee. "Hey. Can you please just do it my way now, and we can talk about how mad y'are later?"

"Oh, I don't get mad. Wrath is a sin." Hiccup fingered the skull-shaped buckle on the front of his belt. "Could we try using my knife to free my hand from your, ah, chest? I'll give your skin back to you later."

"No."

Goldie bit her lip. Like alter, like alter, apparently. Well, that made sense. Technically, they were the same brain. Just... different viewpoints, or something. Goldie really wasn't sure, and had never bothered to investigate the issue very closely.

Hiccup tried to pull away, his wings and feet beginning to get restless. His ears flicked up and down. "I know it will hurt me, and you, and maybe we'll have to take you to the Breath Temple for healing, but, ah, then we won't have to make out, you see."

"Untying our weaves isn't making out!" Anti-Marigold pressed her fingertips against her forehead. Her wings quivered behind her. "Puck, we're in front of these guys. Don't tell them that."

Hiccup just looked at her for a puzzled second. "Oh. Is it a secret? You should have told me it was a secret. When I need help, I ask questions. But, well, after we cut my hand free and you start bleeding, I'm willing to _hiccup_ us back to the cloudlands on my rich daddy's credit card. Did Foop bring my wand?" He touched the sheath on the left side of his body. Empty.

Anti-Marigold looked back at him. Then she looked over at the couch. She ran one hand through her black hair, clenching it at the front. "I'm so sorry y'all have to see this," she told Goldie and Poof, and sounded truly apologetic. "I really never do this, but this is awkward as, and I'm in a huge rush and don't wanna get stabbed for no reason. Y'all know how it is. Never, ever do this. Always get consent first. I'm a bad role model."

Goldie opened her mouth, and Poof tensed his wings, but before either of them could say anything, Anti-Marigold lunged at the left side of Hiccup's neck with her mouth. Her teeth clamped. "Hey," he cried, stumbling towards the fireplace. He writhed against her, but Anti-Marigold held his arm with both hands. "Stop it," he protested next. "That's not fair! You're cheating!"

Anti-Marigold pulled away from his neck. As an anti-will o' the wisp, she didn't have sharp fangs. Her teeth were flat, and Goldie really wasn't sure if they'd been effective at nipping Hiccup's skin. Maybe it didn't matter. He pushed her face away, clutching his neck and gaping like a puppy on a hot stove.

"Hey," he said again, this time with his eyes watering. Then he blinked hard. His eyes narrowed. "Fine. Let's go finish it. But that was very mean, and you still broke your promise."

She swiped her tongue around her lips and fixed him with a deadpan stare that made him twitch. "Work with me here, mate. Look, I don't want this either, and I'll make it up to y'all later, I promise. But, we can't jist stay like this for the rest of the night. I mean, what would Cosmo and Wanda say? You want them to find us like this? You wanna fall asleep like this? You want them to think we did it on purpose?"

Hiccup shook his head rapidly. With a surprising amount of grace and maturity for a young drake whose hand was stuffed just beneath a damsel's breasts, he scooped Anti-Marigold to his shoulder. After snorting once, he simply wandered across the kitchen and down the far hall. The bathroom door shut and locked. There were two seconds of silence, followed by a loud, "Hey, don't pin me! Get off! You know I hate small spaces!"

"Oh my dust," Goldie managed when a minute had passed and they hadn't returned. She clenched her knees together. "Um. Th-that happened. That actually… _happened_. I didn't think that was actually going to happen. Uh, should we do something about this? I mean, are we really just gonna let them hang out alone doing, ah, whatever back there? I mean, we don't know where this is going. I know it's, well, Anti-Fairy migration season and all, but if Cosmo and Wanda come back with their innocent li'l _godkid_ -"

"Let's just…" Poof put his hands over his ears. "Not. Talk. Right now. And we'll deal with this later." His smirk was gone. Sweat clumped along his forehead, gathering at his headband. "So, uh, can you still pick up on their auras in the energy field?"

"Not from here. They're out of my range. You can?"

"Let's just say that I'm gonna walk over here." He got up from the couch and retreated to the cabin's front door without taking his hands off his temples or opening his eyes. Goldie busied herself by fiddling with the phone in her lap. Then Poof said, "This is my fault. I just know it."

Goldie raised her eyes to the hallway. "Hm?"

"I mean, Foop and I have equal shares of the magic in the Nebulas energy pool. Did I tell you that's what we're calling it, Nebulas? We decided that a while ago. Anyway, I don't know about Poppy - er, Dame Poof - but I know that me and Foop, our crowns float at the same height. We're synced up closer than most Fairies are. This is because I was touching your boobs that one time. That's why they got stuck there, and now they're both back there… cuddling… and they don't want to be, and it makes my tummy hurt. I shouldn't have done it. We shouldn't have done _any of that_ at all."

"Poof." Goldie stuffed the phone in the pocket of her skirt. Lifting her wings, she floated over to him. "I don't think the core-sync works like that, hon. Foop just caught her with his hand. It was part of their practiced dance. It's not your fault it happened ta be the spot their molecules got tied, sugarplum."

" _Ugh_." He raked his fingernails down his cheeks and turned his gaze to the ceiling. "I hate finding out my actions have consequences. Oh dust, I want my peppermint. I really need my peppermint. I'm trying _so hard_ , and I was doing so good until today, but I want it. Smoof, I'm a wreck."

She pondered that for a minute, then picked up his hand. "Do you wish we hadn't done it?"

Poof stared at her, like he wasn't entirely focused, and Goldie wondered if even over here by the door, he could still pick up on Hiccup and Anti-Marigold at the edge of his senses. A light whimper slipped through his lips. Still clutching her hand in his fist, he eased down the wall. "I- Goldie, I- I mean, it's not you. Don't feel bad. I _like_ you. I _liked_ sharing magic with you. But we probably shouldn't do it again. I mean, what if I get pregnant next time? It could happen. We can't raise a baby. We're in school. Your mom might have had her first at this age and everything turned out fine, because she wasn't in school and there were other wisps to help raise him, but _my_ mom and dad would twist my wings in a knot if they found out I did something like this behind their backs. I can't keep that kind of secret. Goldie, we're 150,000. We shouldn't be doing this. There's like, risk and stuff. Okay, I'm a huge adrenaline junkie, but- but I can't do this."

Goldie sat down beside him and pulled in her knees. She stroked his knuckles with her thumb. "Poof, honey, you're infertile as long as Finley's keeping you subordinate. And we were smart about it too. They haven't honey-locked. It's been over three months, and they didn't _say_ they did. Won't it be all over the news when the Anti-Fairy prince gets all glowy and purple and everyone knows it? We'd have heard by now. They would a' said. It's like you told me in the bathroom over there: We were the most careful people, hon."

"Goldie…" Poof turned his head away, though he didn't let go of her hand. "I like you, okay? But maybe we should take a break."

"From being intimate," she clarified after a short pause.

"From each other."

"Oh. Oh my. Uh. But… but…" Goldie bit her lip until it burned, then let it go. "Your mama was just starting ta like me, hon. I'd hoped maybe-"

"I know, I know! We worked so hard to get here, and- and I'm being horrible about this." Still not looking at her, Poof kissed her wrist. "I know it's not fair to you. You've been so nice. You didn't do anything wrong. It's all me, just freaking out like a baby. But I want to break up. You said you'd let me, right? Even though you're a wisp?"

She dropped her gaze and fingered his hand. "I did say that. Didn't I?"

Well. She _should_. Yet she still found herself tonguing the sacs that ridged her gums. They squished, full of paralyzing venom. Fresh since she'd come of age. Fresh and potent now that it was winter again.

One kiss. It would only take one.

Poof spun around, his ponytail and the long ribbons on his headband slapping her cheek. Soft tears glittered at the base of his eyes. He grabbed her shoulder. "Goldie, _please_. Let me go. I can't do this right now. I need some time off to just think. Focus on something else. Like saucerbee."

"I…" Goldie blinked. She blinked again. She tried to find the words, but found her throat burning instead. Not because of the venom sacs that marked her kind as a danger to most sane people in the cloudlands… the venom sacs that had never bothered Poof, because he saw past them and knew she was more than a stereotype. When she did speak, her voice wasn't stable. "I gave myself to you, though?"

She regretted the words the instant she saw the pain flash through his eyes. Her burning throat closed over. Minty. Now she was _that_ wisp. The wisp she promised she'd never be.

"I mean," she backpedaled, "we can break up if you want to, sugar." And she forced herself to smile, forced herself to shrug. Even closed her eyes as she did it. "We're popular kids. They expect us ta break up now and again. It'll be right as rainbows. We'll get by."

He gulped. His hand had started to shake against hers. "Can… can we still be friends?"

Goldie looked at her feet. Poof looked at her feet.

"Sure thing, sugarwings. We can stay friends. But, Poof?"

"Yes?"

"Would it be all right if… if while we take a break, I see where Foop stands with his maybe-girlfriend, and with me, and maybe… see how that goes for a little while?"

Pause.

"Are you, um…? A dual-Court kisser, Goldie? I never knew that."

"I… don't know. I'm still figuring that out." Goldie raised her head. "I wanted ta ask you first. If it would be okay. Foop likes me too. I kinda want to see where it goes."

Poof was staring at her now. His grip crushed her fingers. "Um. Okay? I guess that's fine. You can do what you want… But he's my opposite. What do you see in him?"

She shrugged defensively. "He's way scrumptious-looking for a nerd."

"I'm not?"

"Oh, you're cute too."

"Goldie, _Hiccup_. Remember?" Poof scooted closer, his eyes darting over her face. "You can't date just one of them. You've gotta take both, and they're both nuts."

She hated to say it, but she did anyway: "I don't mind dating them both. Lots of wisps date more than one boy at a time. It's not weird for us. I'm dating both you and Daxton."

"But that doesn't count! Your mom picked him for you; you have to. You date me during the school year and Daxton when you go home to your burrow system over the breaks. That's _different_. But Foop- Anti-Poof- He's an anti-fairy! He's evil! Oh dust, Goldie!" And he smashed their hands into his forehead. His shoulders shook. "They are literally back there right now, doing _weird_ _Anti-Fairy kissy_ _stuff_ , and you want to ask him out?"

It sounded worse when he put it like that. Goldie withdrew her hand, but it didn't stop his irritation.

"Goldie, remember what happened to Cavatina? Your _brother?_ "

"My- brother?"

He blinked. "Wisp, right?"

"Oh, golly gee. Poof, he and I didn't even live in the same burrow system. The Nevada and Tennessee systems are really quite different. For one thing, ours is bigger. Now you're just being mean, typecasting me. I'm a Goldenglow, and just because I'm the wisp's ambassador in training doesn't mean I-" Goldie pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Well, now it was _really_ sounding worse. "I don't know! I- You're right. I shouldn't like Foop. But it's not my fault. I didn't pick him on purpose."

Poof tipped his head. "I picked you."

"Because we were kids! But now we're practically adults, and that's not how liking people works."

"How does it work, then?"

"I don't know, sugar. I'm just a- a- a hormonal li'l wisp damsel who wants to blitz every drake she sees! That's all I am! Just a _goshdarn walking stereotype!"_

"Goldie…" Poof slipped his arm behind her shoulders. Goldie shoved him off. Her shoulder bumped the wall, one wing catching in a dangling curtain.

"No! Don't touch me. I- I don't want to hurt you, pumpkin."

Poof withdrew, but with a frown. "Why would you hurt me?"

"Because!" She sprang to her feet. "When you said you wanted to break up, what was the first thing I thought? Go on, lemoncake. Guess it."

Realization passed along his face. "Goldie, you didn't mean it."

 _"Say it."_

"It's not your fault if you thought for a second about paralyzing me with your Kiss of Frost and carrying me back to your dorm. No, that's not your fault."

"Not my fault? Not my fault?" She backed away as Poof rose to his feet. "It's not my fault because I'm a wisp? Because that's just how wisps are?"

"That's not how I see it."

"Whose idea was it to make you hers last September when she got a li'l extra hormonal? And that was _way_ out of season! What's going to happen to us when it's actually my time? I could've really hurt you. Not just then, but any other time we've gotten close. Frozen y'all with my Kiss of Frost. What kind a' good girl does that? Who lured you into it with a coaxing finger and a- a seductive li'l smile and swirl a' the wings? Poof! Why do you stay? My, am I awful hurting you? Glorious stars above, sugar, you deserve so much more than me." And she clenched one of those low, long pigtails in either hand. "Why do you stay? You're a fairy. I'm a wisp. How did this happen? Is it- Am I doing something to control y'all?"

And if she was… would he leave her when she stopped? Up and leave her? Break up forever? The thought made her wings flutter against her waist.

It would only take one.

He took up her hands. Both of them, and held them between their chests as he stared up at her eyes. Normally he was shorter than her, though he was rarely on the ground long enough for that to be obvious. Which he was right now. She wasn't that much taller than him, but it was just enough to make it awkward. And she was still shaking, of course, and sobbing as the tears leaked down her cheeks, so that totally didn't help.

"I'm sorry- I'm sorry," she managed to choke out. "Please don't say something nice ta me. I'm not trying to fish for y'all's pity. Please don't. Poof, we gotta break up. I don't want you staying with me just 'cuz I'm crying over spilled rosewater now. I don't want you thinking later that I tricked y'all into this. Wisp damsels trick drakes into staying with them. I don't want that for you. You're free. _You're free to me."_

Poof looked at her, his head slightly to one side. He didn't say anything. Goldie untangled their fingers. She had backed all the way into the wall, behind the cabin's front door, so if it opened then they'd both get squashed. With Poof blocking her in the corner, she didn't have much room to maneuver. Instead, she pressed her fingers to her lips and shook her head.

"Please don't stay with me. I don't want to hurt y'all."

He brought her hands together, folding them. "I'm scared too, Goldie," he said, keeping his head tilted. "I'm scared of getting pregnant. But we'll just be careful. If we don't do it again for awhile, then that solves the problem, and we can still hang out like we used to. Boyfriend and girlfriend."

"I'll hurt you. We're 150,000 now. It's not like it used to be. I have a real strong Kiss of Frost now- I have _thoughts_ sometimes…"

"You're not going to hurt me. It's going to be fine. I'll be right there to make sure you don't." He continued to hold her hands, his gaze locked on hers and absolutely serious. "I don't care if you have bad thoughts sometimes. I'll help you. We'll get through this. Together. I'm scared too, but it'll be okay. Okay?"

Goldie squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm manipulating you."

"No you're not." Poof snorted. "Goldie, I worked my crown off to get my Mama to start liking you and be okay with this. I'm not humble enough to tell her that when she finally said this is okay, I turned around and broke up with you."

She couldn't help but laugh at that. A soft, somewhat strangled laugh. She lifted their hands and wiped the tears from her eyes. "Can I kiss you?"

Poof grinned. He lifted his wings and rose into the air. "Just tell me if you feel your Kiss of Frost slipping in, and we'll stop."

Goldie put the fingers of one hand in the back of his fuzzy purple hair. "Y'all don't mind if I get obsessive sometimes worrying that I'm not perfect?"

"No. You don't mind if we don't go any further than kissing for a while?"

"No."

He paused, his lips hovering above hers, and then bunched his eyebrows. "So we're together again, right? Or do you still want to date Foop and Hiccup?"

"Who needs Anti-Poofs? I've got the better one." Goldie pressed her mouth into his. Poof was a soft kisser- gentle, roaming, though he focused most of his attention on her lower lip. They kept their hands clasped the whole time, she on the ground and he in the air with his legs tucked beneath him. It was interesting. The night they'd given themselves to each other, their kisses had been stormy and fierce. Warm along her neck and then a little bit lower. This? This was just simple and sweet. And she liked it just as much. How strange that two Fairies who had kissed each other a hundred times before could still surprise one another accidentally.

They stopped when they heard the squeak of a distant door. Two very flustered Anti-Fairies picked their way back down the hall, holding their hands to their necks and not looking one another in the eyes.

"Hey, Foop," Goldie said, for lack of better conversation. She moved towards the couch again, Poof brimming with smugness as he followed. "You're back. I can tell it's you from that cute li'l limp in your wing." She'd never found out how he got that, actually. He'd always leaned on his right side since the first day they'd met, and that was back in Spellementary School.

"Yes, Hiccup got… tired. So, um." Foop's color hadn't yet lightened. His ears were at peak alertness. As they sat, he took his place in front of the couch and cleared his throat. "Th-the dance. Did our demonstration help?"

"Are you fritzy?" Poof let out a laugh. "That didn't help my self-confidence at all. Even minus the finishing move with the knives, which I will admit looked pretty cool, I'll never be able to dance like _that_."

" _Obviously_. I've been practicing all these stupid steps for a hundred and fifty thousand years. You've hardly had a semester to learn anything. But, luckily, you won't have to. You've only got to be good enough to meet Cherrywell's expectations, and he's hardly the strictest judge." Foop rubbed his cheeks and walked around to the table. He flipped his notebook to the first page. His voice steadied out. "Yes. You're going to be graded in th _rrr_ ee main areas. First you'll need to dance, of course. Secondly, appropriate Tarrow dress, and in the right color for the year of your birth. That shouldn't be difficult."

Poof leaned past Goldie and groped about the table for the fruit bowl again. "Soil year. That's brown."

"Brown, red, black," Foop confirmed. "But brown should be the most prominent color. Third, you need to provide a list of the steps you'll be demonstrating. You need at minimum ten different ones, and if you forget or do them out of order, you'll be marked down."

Anti-Marigold flopped on Goldie's other side and snatched the last apple from beneath Poof's fingers. "Three marks'll drop y'all a letter grade real quick."

"Ouch," he said, shooting her a sideways glare.

"Aw, that's nothing, mate. We'd basically get disowned if we messed up so bad in the ballroom."

"Unfortunately, she's hardly exaggerating." Foop flipped to the next page, then back again. "Since my father's secured a stable supply of food for now, there really isn't much for we Anti-Fairies to do in Anti-Fairy World but entertain each other and chatter about the stars. Goldie, come walk me through your part so far."

Goldie jumped when she heard her name, because he hadn't even looked up. "Oh?"

"Yes. I don't want you butchering my people's traditions if there's any chance my name will get traced back to this, and with Poof's family out on the hill and only the _lamest_ selection of board games on that bookshelf, I assume you don't have any better way planned to spend an afternoon in an empty cabin in the middle of nowhere." He stared directly at her when he said that part.

 _He thinks I can't control myself,_ she realized, narrowing her eyes. _Because I'm a wisp. Well, that makes sense. Poof trusts me. You're his opposite, so of course y'all don't. And to think I wanted to leave him and date you. Pffft. Easy on those hormones, Marigold._

"Poof and I had been fixing on practicing our dance anyway," was her reply. She grabbed her milbark wand and gave it a spin. Instantly, her golden sweater and brown skirt were replaced with a full green bodysuit that promised to be soft and easy to move in. And which was perhaps a little tighter in certain areas than it needed to be. Foop blinked. His mouth snapped shut. Anti-Marigold put down her apple.

"Goldie," Poof said. She turned, and he flipped over his palms. "Where you going with this?"

A flash of guilt shot down her spine as she looked herself over. _Right_. Boyfriend.

She made a few hasty adjustments to her outfit, then dug around in her schoolbag until she found the list of steps she and Poof had scribbled out on their way back to school from lunch one day. Foop creased his forehead at a few of them and commented lightly that they would need to add or double a step in between, but he escorted her to the center of the living area anyway.

"Are you going to be able to do this all right when I'm so much taller than you?" she asked. Honest question, though Foop still sent her a miffed upward look. He was a lot shorter than Poof, especially on the floor.

"Don't flatter yourself, Goldie. I plan to do it so much better than 'all right'- and outgrow you in the end to boot."

"Y'all wish. Damsels are always tall."

Foop rolled his eyes. "I could rattle off a whole lot of statistics proving you otherwise, not the least of which is that Uncle Cosmo stands taller than Auntie Wanda, but I will refrain. Let's work on your finish. That looks to be the hardest part, so Anti-Marigold and I may as well spot you through it while we're around."

"If y'all need me," Anti-Marigold said, "I'll be eating cheese and crackers over here."

"I will need you, so do that and don't wander off. Goldie." Foop's attention zeroed back on her. "Both hands in mine, together, your palms facing down. That's it. We'll move backwards. For you, I mean. Then my way. Yes. Two more times. Yes, that's it. That's exactly right."

His feet were faster than hers, even though she could feel from the tightness of his fingers that Foop was fighting to be gentle and patient. Then his claws slipped away.

"Here I'll let you go with my right hand. Always the right hand- the lead's left is always the last to break contact. Your left goes behind you, always down, and I mimic it with my right, pointing up. Palm flat? Fingers loose? Splendid, and bring it back in. Take another step so we're beside each other. Hold my shoulder (Mind the wing). That's it, Goldie, you're doing wonderfully. Now, my right arm moves straight across the front of your chest this way, all the way around to your back."

"Um-!"

"Nicely done, your leg will go up, get ready, and down we go."

Foop dipped her towards the floor without waiting for much of a response. When the apexes of her wings brushed the rug, Goldie kicked up her leg as planned. It was plenty high, but the force of it flung her foot against his cheek. She hit solid bone. Foop recoiled, pressing his wing against his mouth. His claws pinched into her soft wings and she thought she felt a small tear, but he didn't drop her.

"Oh, you- you…!"

"Smoof." Weakly, Goldie forced a smile. "S-sorry, Anti-Poof."

"Beats getting stabbed," he managed around the wing. He inhaled through his nose. "Let's… run through that again. It's fine. It's fine."

They did. Step, step, catch and dip. Goldie flicked her leg up and it stayed. Foop leaned over her as they dipped low, his rounded nose almost bumping against her pointed one. She could feel the cool current of his effervescence tracing a line down her throat. Her wings thrummed against his hands.

Those eyes. Those enormous, searing, purple eyes, drinking in her entire face. Soft eyes, tender eyes.

Poof's eyes.

With a start, Goldie glanced away and brought one hand up to cover her cheek. Hopefully, no one could tell by the nervous set of her teeth just what was flashing through her mind.

It was over then. Foop brought her to her feet and turned her back over to Poof, then stood by to critique and adjust their stance with his hands as necessary until they had repeated the move several times to his liking. Anti-Marigold clicked a spoon idly against the mugs in the kitchen cupboards. Forgotten? Possibly; Foop was the type who always wanted to do everything by himself if he could. By the time Cosmo and Wanda stomped the snow from their boots on the cabin porch and clomped inside with their godkid scuttling ahead of them for the toilet, Goldie and Poof had the step pretty much down.

"Uh," Wanda said as the silence settled in. "Ooh, nice one," Cosmo seconded with a beaming smile. Goldie dropped her leg. Poof swung her upright and rapidly brushed off the front of her green dress.

"Um, th-that's for our Tarrow dance. You know. For our final school project in Anti-Ballroom."

Wanda lay her fingertips over her mouth. "Sweetie, look. He really likes her. He even tied his shoes."

Cosmo immediately burst into tears. "Nymphs always grow up so fast! And I never even took a picture of what life was like before this moment changed our whole world."

Wanda grabbed his hand. "Oh Cosmo, hold on. Lean on me. I'm right here. As long as we're together, we'll make it through anything."

"I'll always remember the instant the universe shifted," Cosmo continued, still clinging to her with his eyes leaking over. "This cabin is now my favorite place in the world."

"Mama… Guys…"

"My friend and I were just leaving, Auntie," Foop said briskly, not even looking at her as he stalked towards the fireplace. He snapped his scarf from the hook and yanked the knitted hat over his ears. "No need to tell my parents I was here. They're on migration anyway and my understanding is that they are not to be disturbed under any circumstances. 'Tis the season, as we say."

Goldie glanced at Wanda. Wanda glanced back at her. The question went unspoken, and unanswered. As Anti-Marigold lay aside her spoon, Goldie cleared her throat and moved to the door.

"Anti-Poof?"

He already had several of his books balanced on the fingertips of one hand. Goldie checked again over her shoulder at Wanda, who bit her lip.

"Well. I'd like to thank y'all for getting on our backs about this. Thanks for teaching us. Nuada knows we needed it."

"Bah, well. I'm always in the mood for riling that purple puffball up." Foop bowed as he zipped up his jacket. "It was an honor dancing with you, good dame. I expect you to nail that dip when you p _rrr_ esent in front of Cherrywell next month. If you have someone record it, send me the video straight away."

Anti-Marigold patted her cheek as Foop pulled open the door. "Knock 'em smoky, sheila. I'll be barracking for you."

Goldie drew in a breath of the cold air whipping in from outside. When Foop grabbed the rest of his books, she flared her wings.

"Wouldn't y'all rather stay with us? It's against my good breeding to send anybody high-tailing off in the dark and the snow this way. Wanda and I are cooking, um…" What was the most stereotypical Anti-Fairy breakfast she could think of? "… scones, muffins, and bacon in the morning."

"Bacon?" Cosmo asked in delight, and promptly swung her into the same position Poof had held Goldie in just a minute before. "Ooh, Wanda, all of a sudden, I just remembered how much I love you."

"Cosmo, not in front of the ki- _MMF!"_

"Get a fishbowl, guys," Poof scolded, and Goldie sensed him put his hands over his eyes.

Foop and Anti-Marigold were still blinking at one another. "Well," Foop finally sighed, stroking his mustache, "I suppose…"

"It is migration season," Anti-Marigold said, nestling her head against his shoulder. "It ain't like anti-will o' the wisps are super loved in the colony cave anyway. And only the worst guy in the cloudlands would even _think_ of dumping me off at the entrance gate and flitting inside without me two years in a row."

"Anti-Coriander and I have a certain image to project," he muttered as he kissed her hair.

"It's near Christmas time and we've plenty of rooms downstairs," Goldie wheedled, already trying to close the door against the wind. It bumped against Foop's pointed shoe, and he made no attempt to slide it away. "Please accept my hospitality. I simply must thank y'all both for your kindness."

"Yeah, then we won't have to buy you real presents," Poof added with a smirk as he skimmed over. He dodged Goldie's jabbing elbow with a sharp beat of his wings.

"Apparently we're staying now." Foop dropped his books on the table again and cracked his knuckles. "We'll spend the morning running through those steps again. And perhaps I'll manage to stomach a bit of hot chocolate. Don't any of you break a mirror or spill the salt, or I'm afraid we'll be on the run as soon as we've finished dirtying the place up."

"We understand," Goldie told him honestly.

"Sure, he says that." Anti-Marigold patted Goldie's other cheek this time, a bit more forcefully than before. She grinned when her counterpart leaned away. "Sleep tight, sheila. I make no promises of playing nice."

"Ha ha."

Once the pair had moved away from the door, Goldie finally did manage to shut it. A babbling conversation broke out between the two antis and Cosmo and Wanda, but she didn't hear more than a snippet here and there. Instead, she moved a few paces back and stared through the windows. The setting sun lit the snow with dancing flames. Evergreens nestled up and down the valley in bundles like curious rabbits peeking from their dens.

She started humming to herself and turned a circle with an invisible partner. Without a word, as she spun, Poof swept her up and let her complete the step, over and over, in his arms. Turning. Turning. Turning. Kiss. And dip.

* * *

 **A/N:** Foop and Hiccup are two alternate personalities who can be addressed separately as such. Both also identify as their adult name (Anti-Poof) and as their private name (Nebula). If you walk into a room and don't know which personality is out at the moment, the polite way to address them is as either Nebula or Anti-Poof (depending on age and the intimacy of your relationship), and allow them to correct you if they want to be addressed as either Foop or Hiccup.

Despite having their adult name, the two are usually referred to separately for the reader's benefit. Disclaimer: This may vary by narrator.


	41. (2) Temptation

_Summary:_ Foop and Anti-Marigold have a romantic talk about the most romantic of subjects: Politics.

 _Characters:_ Anti-Marigold, Foop, Poof, Wanda, Goldie, Jalla, Hiccup, Cosmo

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Watch and Learn" / Precedes either "Mind Your Manners" or "Reality Doesn't Work That Way"… Not sure which yet

 _Prerequisites:_ "Watch and Learn"

* * *

 **2\. Temptation** (Evening after "Watch and Learn")

 _Year of Fire, Winter of the Dancing Sunset_

* * *

Anti-Marigold had heard Foop describe his counterpart as "dumb as a genie at a water park" before, but this was pushing it even for Poof. If Foop hadn't been grading papers for that Advanced Counterhexing class he TA'd this zodiac cycle, if Goldie hadn't been washing off her make-up in the enormous bathroom, if Wanda hadn't been scrubbing the lingering white flecks out of several mugs that had been used and only hastily rinsed out for a week straight by this point, if Cosmo hadn't been playing retro racing video games with their godkid downstairs, then maybe she wouldn't have been the only one who smelled the tang of peppermint and gritty sugar powder in the air. And this was coming from an Anti-Fairy, too. Not exactly the sharpest nose in the cabin.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she slipped through the ectothermic chamber and out the back door. The door didn't even squeak when she opened it, but Wanda still called out and ask where she was going at this time of evening. She cursed behind her teeth. Stupid fairy aura sensing powers.

"Just out for a few minutes," Anti-Marigold shouted down the hall. "It's plenty warm in here for y'all Seelie, but I need some fresh air to cool off. Don't worry about me, sheila. I've got my scarf. Took all the bright blue yarn we had for miles in Anti-Fairy World, but I knitted it myself, you know. And I have Anti-Poof's sweatshirt too. I won't freeze my earrings off either. Be back in two shakes."

She'd even put on boots, even though they were Foop's. As an anti-will o' the wisp, she didn't have opposable toes, and the tips of the boots pinched her feet in a weird place. Not that that was super unusual. She'd been paying extra for Fairy shoes ever since she'd first held a wad of lagelyn bills and coins. Of course, when Foop had stopped by her dinky little apartment to invite her along for a trip, he had neglected to mention they were _poof_ ing several dozen solar systems over to a completely frozen planet. Not that she didn't have the magic to wish up her own snow stuff. Her wand was inside on the kitchen table, and even though they were way, way far from the Big Wand, she was pretty sure she could squeeze out enough power to spare. It was just that, well… if she did that, she wouldn't get to put on Foop's boots.

… It was complicated.

And the flakes came tumbling _down_. They caught in her eyelashes and made her think of sneezing the same way watching someone yawn made her think of doing that. Tight snow and patches of ice crunched with every step. Even with her wings dangling down her back and the helium gasket in her head on standby, she didn't weigh enough to really leave prints. The only tracks in the snow were those of the resident fairy godchild. He'd more than made up for working solo; he'd left behind hundreds of them, tiny and sprinkled everywhere.

Anti-Marigold bundled her hands in the pockets of Hiccup's purple sweatshirt and trudged across the hill to the garage shed. Wind and flecks of hail buffeted her face. That was how she'd picked up the scent of smuggled candy, after all- on the wind. Wanda, working at the sink, had been admiring each decorated mug with the kitchen window shut. Anti-Marigold had been facing backwards in her chair and watching the shed ever since Poof had slipped out to it fifteen minutes ago. So, when the wind had carried the scent over the hill and through the front room window, she'd been the only one to notice. That was it. That had to be it, because no parent would pick up the smell of peppermint and just… ignore it.

And there he was. Not even _in_ the shed, but around the side of it. Anti-Marigold paused by the covered water pump, not sure if he'd noticed her yet or if she'd have to clear her throat to get his attention. Crikey, was he out of it, if he, a _fairy_ , didn't sense her standing there. He held the candy cane like a bouquet of roses in his fist, his head tilted back so he could watch the sparkly clouds of effervescence he occasionally expelled take the forms of running animals above his head until they faded away. He'd swirl the damp tip of the candy cane through a clump of blue powder in a Ziploc bag in his other hand, then bring it to his lips and lick it off. The cycle would start again. After she'd watched Poof shape a glittering hunting dog, a galloping horse, and a fox on the run out of his own eager magic, Anti-Marigold finally leaned her elbow against the door frame and decided to speak.

"That's an awful habit, sailor. You'll give yourself _and_ your counterparts diabetes."

Poof watched the trio of sugarbreath animals dissolve into nothingness. Then he shifted his eyes over to her. He'd had gray circles beneath them ever since they were kids, but in the pale glow of Delki's six small moons, somehow both they and his pinkish gyne freckles looked more enunciated than ever.

"Thanks," he said. "I gotta, y'know? There's too much power up inside my fat head… I've always gotta let it out somehow." He brought the sharp end of the candy cane back to his mouth, his fingers wrapped around the hook. He slurped straight peppermint off it, then added, "It's kind of better that I get it out of my system this way than I just let it rip out the other end."

"I feel that, mate."

Poof smiled and lifted one eyebrow. He stretched an arm towards her, the Ziploc bag dangling between his forefinger and thumb. "I only added a _little_ Smile Dip anyway. You want some? It's raspberry apple."

"No thanks, but I'll take a cane, if you've got a spare."

He rummaged in the pockets of his purple parka, then found a fruit-flavored one and held that out to her instead. She took it, stripped it of its wrapper, and leaned back to flick the candy cane from one side of her mouth to the other. "Well. Your dad and girlfriend were talking about you. He saw my eyes and had a few questions."

It took several seconds for Poof to process the words. When he did, he lazily turned his head. "She having fun?"

Anti-Marigold pursed her lips around the candy cane. "Crikey, you really are minted, aren't you? What's in this junk?" She grabbed the Smile Dip baggie back from him and flipped it over, squinting at the writing smeared across the top in red marker.

"Sugar and dye, I think."

"No kidding, mate. This stuff ain't even legal in Hy-Brasil." She tossed it back. "Do your parents know you're out here?"

Poof shrugged. The two major exit points of magic on a Fairykind body were the mouth and the right hand. With both of these closed, the effervescence inside him had few paths left for escape, and chose his nose. Anti-Marigold watched two thin trails of glittering steam, visible in the cold, leak from his nostrils and swirl together in the air. The steam morphed into a lioness on the prowl before the Delkian wind swept it off towards the cabin.

"Huh. The news crews made a big deal about you kicking the habit a few months back, y'know. We heard it all the way in Anti-Fairy World, Mr. Popular."

"The news guys don't have to know everything about me." Smiling, Poof leaned his head back against the shed. Anti-Marigold pushed both hands deep in her hoodie pocket and mimicked him.

"Why'd you decide to pepper up tonight?"

"I dunno. Just stressed. My magic flares up when I'm stressed." The words 'flares' and 'up' slurred together. _Flurzup_. Anti-Marigold flipped her cane to the other corner of her mouth again. It had started to sharpen already, the point cutting at her gums.

"Yep. Stress is the worst. What's munching at y'all? Bet it's heaps serious."

Poof removed the cane from his mouth and pressed it back in the Smile Dip. Chunks of blue powder had started to turn green from mixing with saliva globs. "Huh… Promise you won't tell Foop?"

"Nah, mate."

"See, Goldie and I did the blitzing thing back in September."

Oh.

Anti-Marigold took several seconds to find and focus on her inner calm. Then she raised one eyebrow. "Congrats?"

"You should have been there… It was crazed over. Fin knows. I didn't tell Sammy." He trailed off and sneezed. When he did, two rows of blooming chrysanthemums popped up out of the snow, bright and ready to face the day. Too bad for them. In this cold, they weren't likely to last 'til morning. Poof spotted them, grunted, feigned a kick in their general direction, and popped his cane in his mouth again. There wasn't that much of it left by this point.

"I take it there were regrets," Anti-Marigold guessed. "About…" What was the Seelie euphemism for 'singing together', again? "Sleeping with Goldie."

Poof scratched his neck, then shrugged. "It was fun, but I kind of thought… Maybe we should break up, though. It feels different between us now. I can't get pregnant so long as Fin's around and I let him be in charge. It's okay to do it sometimes. But I dunno. It's weird. By Anti-Fairy standards, I guess me and Goldie are late bloomers to have like, waited so long after getting our adult wings and stuff? I got mine over six thousand years back. But we're still young for adult Fairies. I dunno. It's weird to think about it. And weirder when I think about humans. They age different than we do. Huh. That's weeeird."

After a long suck, Poof glanced over at her again. He shifted his wings, for the first time orienting his body to face her head-on. "Hey, you've got blue eyes now. They used to be red. You caught the iris virus off Foop, huh?"

"Yep. Going on two months, so…" She shrugged too. "Sorry, mate. I would've swung by Poofypants to show off earlier, but I had work. You get it."

"Where you working?"

"Little Olympus. I just started. That little sandwich shop across from that huge fancy candle place, just inside your border on Plane 5?"

"Oh, I've been there before… Was it fun?"

"The sandwiches?"

"Foop."

"An experience."

"Sparkly."

"Yeah."

Poof blew out a stream of effervescence that turned into a leaping gazelle. It bounded into the garage shed and vanished in the dark. "I saw you with a saucerbee jacket. Inside the place, I mean. The cabin. He gave that to you?"

"Sort of."

"That was mint of him."

"Sure was."

He summoned a diving shark in the air. "I've got one just like that, you know. I'm team captain for Poofypants. The school. It's all lime green, but it's got like, the dark sleeve cuffs. Yeah, it looks just like his, except mine's got a heart-shaped clasp instead of buttons to hold it shut. It's sort of like a cape that way. Kinda, y'know?"

"I've seen it." He wore it everywhere. "It looks great on you. Shows your muscles instead of your stomach tub."

"I guess."

Anti-Marigold shifted her wings against the shed. Bloody Darkness, her ankles were freezing. "You mentioned breaking up with Goldie."

"She said no…" Poof's voice turned distant. "So I'll stay."

He didn't elaborate on their relationship status. Or more importantly, what it meant for her and Anti-Poof. Well, there was more than one way to crack a coconut. Anti-Marigold forced a smile around her candy cane and even added a juvenile chuckle for effect. "Do you, y'know… like her and stuff?"

Poof chuckled too. His eyes were lazy, exhausted, and he turned his head towards her when he spoke again. "Mmhm… You know, they say fairies only give their souls away once… That's why our subspecies notches wings. It's permanent. We don't remarry if we separate, or one of us dies. We're not supposed to… We just don't."

"So you'll stay."

Nod.

"You tell her you wanted to break up?" Anti-Marigold pushed the toe of her boot against a particularly solid snowdrift. A thin layer on the top was fresh and slid off when she tried, but the rest had frozen into a solid chunk.

"While you were in the back getting untied with Hiccup."

She grimaced and pushed the candy cane deeper in her mouth with her little finger. Hiccup, curled up on the bathroom floor with his hands over his ears, while she sat, hunched over, on the edge of the tub with coils of rainbow string dangling from her fingers. The wobble in his voice shaking with the apple in his throat. Her fists blooming with tangled yarn as they frantically traced their respective karmic weaves back to the source. The electricity crackling in the air between them as they peeled their threads of fate apart while avoiding even cursory eye contact.

The colors of the thread that had stretched between their own chests. Breath yellow for him, Leaves green for her, tied together with passionate reds and distant grays and navy blues. The magical string twitching with instability, laden with knots on both sides of the link. Because he was Hiccup? Or because he was Foop?

"How'd the breaking up go?" she asked Poof. "Like, the part with the words. The talking part. What'd ya say ta get to that topic?"

Poof shrugged a third time. He scratched at his loose hair. It was shaggy, curly, and full of snowflakes, and Anti-Marigold realized then that this was the first time she'd ever seen it down from the usual low ponytail. "I dunno," he murmured. "I just got stressed and it came up in conversation, y'know? It sort of happened."

"Yeah?"

"Yep."

Anti-Marigold fingered the hook of her cane. Then she popped it from her mouth and shoved it curve-first in a less solid snowdrift. The sharp point, its fruity colors washed into white, jabbed up like an icicle. "And it didn't work? Y'all are still together?"

"I guess."

"Well, thanks, Poof. For the candy. And the advice."

"Sure."

Anti-Marigold left him there, his brow furrowed and insomniac eyes combing the gray clouds like a pair of purple searchlights. On her way back to the cabin, she scooped up a handful of clean snow and shoved it in her mouth. It froze the insides of her cheeks. Stiff in places, packing together with her saliva. But, it washed the stinging taste of sugar off her tongue, to a degree. She swallowed.

She circled the porch and entered through the squealing front door this time, in case Wanda (still meticulously picking at the dishes by hand) got suspicious about her sneaking in through the back. The door had a screen. Why, on a frozen planet that never saw summer heat? Dunno.

They were supposed to play card games tonight. They'd agreed, and it sounded more relaxing than trying to perfect the same Tarrow steps over and over forever all night.

Goldie had wandered upstairs again. She no longer wore green, or even her typical striped gold and orange sweater and chocolate brown skirt. Her pajamas were dark blue, coated with swirls of purple and hundreds of white speckles meant to mimic stars, like they'd been painted by a few monkeys who had heard about the night sky maybe once, but had never actually seen it for themselves. Her hair, like Poof's, had been yanked down for the night. She sat on the glass coffee table with one hand to her forehead. Her phone balanced on her knee. A finger hovered over an unknown button.

She looked embarrassed, too. Why, when she Dame Popular, queen of every dance and girlfriend of Fairy World's favorite celebrity kid? Dunno. Anti-Marigold only shrugged at her and shook the snow out of pigtails. They were nice pigtails, thick and black. Most importantly, hanging low instead of pinned high, pulled back only lightly and tied with purple bands. They didn't look silly on her. She looked like she'd just pushed it from her face to keep it clean and out of her face. They didn't make her look too young. Not like a toddler. Old enough to recognize when she made stupid mistakes and old enough to be smart about fixing them too.

Anti-Marigold's eyes locked on the snake-like shape behind her. Her wings sprang out. The creature had been lying so still, she'd totally missed it while thinking about her pigtails, and Goldie's current lack thereof.

It was a… something. A centipede sort of being, as thick around as she was, and at least three times as long. He lounged before the fire, with his head held erect just right so his neck blended with the black stovepipe behind him that ran up to the roof… except for the fact that his entire body was striped lime green and white, like some kind of radioactive candy cane. The green parts of him even glowed under the dim lights. That was what threw her. When he'd scampered into the cabin earlier, he'd hustled straight for the bathroom without shedding his snow coat. Now, out here, he wore a sort of vest that offered sleeve holes for six of his arms. He was completely naked below his waist, (if you could even use the words 'naked' and 'waist' to describe his species). His antennae curled into spirals. Eyes? Dunno.

"Oh." Anti-Marigold's shoulders relaxed. "Jeeps, you scared the mint out of me, mate. I didn't see you there for a sec."

The centipede creature tilted his head. This involved tilting most of his neck. He folded two pairs of his forelegs together, resting them on the stone platform that bore the fireplace. The pincers that made up what appeared to be his mouth clicked together. "I apologize for sta'tling you so soon. I meant to make my g'eeting and lunge out to catch you off gua'd as you walked towa'ds the hallway."

"Er… right." Gathering her wings, squaring her shoulders, Anti-Marigold came forward and extended both hands, palms turned up like a dish. "You're Cosmo and Wanda's current godkid. Native Delkian, right? We haven't been introduced. My name is Anti-Marigold."

The boy studied her for another moment, then dipped his neck. "I am Jalla. You be 'elated to Poof's youthmate?"

He spoke awfully good Snobbish, even if it was with an accent that caused him to drop off all his 'r' sounds. Well, that wasn't surprising; the Snobulacs had done an excellent job of distributing the language throughout this quadrant of the known universe long before her ancestors were even born. Anti-Marigold shrugged. "Something like that. Me and Goldie are tight, mate. We're basically twinsies." She glanced at her counterpart as she said it. Goldie raised an eyebrow, but didn't respond. She'd let her shiny yellow hair down. Somehow, she looked younger that way. Maybe because she just seemed so sloppy. That, and the cute pajamas.

Jalla tipped his neck in the other direction. "Cosmo and Wanda have been with me two months now. In all that time, they have not mentioned you. I am unde' the imp'ession that you be the niece. P'haps you be adopted, as thy skin is violet."

"Technically my fur's blue, but I get that a lot. I'm a friend of the family." Anti-Marigold withdrew her hands, since Jalla didn't appear inclined to offer one of his legs for examining. She brushed a strip of hair behind her ear. "Speaking of families, is this your family's cabin? I noticed the Delkian toilet in the bathroom. And, well, we're on Delki, so that's a bit of a tip-off."

"Let's change the subject," Wanda interrupted from the kitchen, at the same time Jalla said simply, "I ate my parents."

"Ah. Good meal?"

"It was, thank you."

Anti-Marigold nodded. She placed her hands to her waist and glanced around the front room. "Did y'all already pick out some games? I was thinking we could play the pirate one, where you draw cards to build up your ship and then attack merchants and each other and collect gold coins and stuff. That one lasts a nice time."

A long tongue flashed out from… somewhere on Jalla's face. He swiped it over his pincers, then arched his back with a ripple that passed all the way down his hundred or so legs. "I p'efe'ence nothing. Wanda, I wish it, please."

Wanda paused. When Anti-Marigold glanced over, she watched the older woman unsheathe her wand in slow motion. Ooh, right. This far from the Big Wand, the energy field got pretty darn sparse. That couldn't be easy (or cheap) to work with. Nonetheless, Wanda was nothing if not a loyal godmother, and she twirled her wand as Jalla had requested. With a _poof_ and cloud of dust, a black cardboard box appeared on the table behind Goldie.

"It's too long," the wisp interrupted without turning to look at it. "Let's play something shorter. It's getting late." She smoothed out a wrinkle in her shirt. "Anyway, Poof's not back from his walk yet."

Walk.

"So be," Jalla decided. I can wait." He brought his face to what appeared to be his haunches and began to lick his flank. Wanda shook her head in amusement and returned to the dishes.

Anti-Marigold eyed her carefully as she approached the last of the three pizza boxes Poof had brought in. It rested in front of a row of mugs and Mason jars on the counter to Wanda's left. There were these straw-like tubes called magic lines that connected a Fairy to the energy field, allowing them to breathe through any of their pores so long as their windpipe remained unobstructed. Fairies had those. Poof had those. If Poof had strolled in here right now, Wanda would have instantly been able to sense what he'd been doing out by the shed. His lines would be shaking, occasionally disconnecting from the energy field, drifting like aimless jellyfish tendrils, or curls of yarn, before snapping back into place.

That was tingle-fritziness. But as an anti-will o' the wisp, she herself breathed only the magic that Goldie had already absorbed and filtered for her. When Goldie breathed, so did Anti-Marigold, and so did Drake Marigold, whoever and wherever he was. Anti-Marigold had never met him personally, but sometimes, when the pumping of her core quickened in her head, she could tell that he was gasping. Probably, he'd been out running, or swimming. Why? Dunno. Since he and Anti-Marigold both drew from Goldie's supply, sometimes they engaged in mental tug o' wars when one of them started to get greedy. Anti-Marigold had picked up a habit of sharply tilting her fists up at the ceiling as though she'd just snapped her wand, in case he could see her somehow up there in the upper planes of existence. She'd done the same thing once or twice when she'd crossed paths with a greater bird-of-paradise. Those were his patron, after all. Had he ever spied on her through their bitty eyes? Dunno.

The three were synced up, but Goldie alone possessed their magic lines. Since Anti-Marigold didn't have any of her own, she couldn't be described as tingle-fritzy, so there was no way she should be able to guess what had happened behind the shed. Unless… Anti-Marigold slid her right hand into her hoodie pocket and clenched it lightly. Could Wanda taste the peppermint in the effervescence she emitted? Technically, Fairies had magical tasting powers, so could they do that? That seemed like cheating.

"Would you hand me that other rag on the hook behind you, Anti-Goldie?" Wanda asked without turning around. Again, this was annoying. Anti-Marigold had floated as silently as possible into the kitchen, keeping near the back wall that housed the microwave and shelves of paper and crayons, and still Wanda had no effort picking up on her.

"It's Anti-Marigold, actually." She shrugged and passed over the requested cloth. "My counterpart likes her nickname. I like our given one. It tells us apart and it's nice.''

"Anti-Marigold then," Wanda agreed. "Did you come to help me?"

"Nah, just to snack." Anti-Marigold picked up one of the last two slices of pineapple pizza in the open box. It was stiff and cold. Also, Cosmo had picked the pineapple off his own piece earlier and left them in a bowl on the counter to stew in their own juices. Anti-Marigold grabbed those too and leaned against the counter to watch Wanda work on a hot chocolate mug with her rag. The pizza was cold, but then again, she was an anti-will o' the wisp living paycheck to paycheck on a meager wage. She wasn't really the picky type.

"You know, I was young once," the fairy said, out of nowhere. Anti-Marigold stopped mid-chew and looked at her. Wanda continued to scrub as though nothing had happened.

"Wanda." Anti-Marigold leaned her hip against the counter and braced her elbow. "Can I hit you up about some girl stuff?"

Wanda glanced into the open living area, as though checking on Anti-Marigold's behalf to see if either Goldie or Jalla were eavesdropping. They were talking in low voices by the fire and made no sign that they had overheard. Honestly, Anti-Marigold didn't care if they did. She had nothing to hide.

"Right, so. Let's say you're a wisp, and y'all had a best friend who wasn't allowed to have a wisp for a girlfriend, but you made out with him anyway 'cuz, you know, it's whatever."

Wanda paused. There weren't a lot of dishes left in the sink. Actually, wasn't that the same mosaic-patterned mug she'd seen Wanda washing before she'd headed out to follow Poof behind the barn? Did she know he was out there? Was she stalling for him to come back in? After a few seconds of thought, Wanda lowered her head and went back to wiping the stain of hot chocolate from its insides with her cloth. "All right."

Anti-Marigold folded her arms, still clutching half her pizza slice in a hand soggy from pineapple chunks. Gritty crumbs clung to her clawless fingertips. "Then let's say that after that, this best friend would come up behind you and spin you around and surprise you with kisses sometimes, but you knew he wasn't s'posed to have a wisp girlfriend. And we're talking serious smooches, sheila. This best friend gives the best kisses."

"Okay. I'm following."

"Yeah, they're tight and cold like a trickling stream. Also you can sort of see his armpits when he's sweeping in for one of those kisses. It sounds dumb, but… He always throws his arms into the air when he's excited about something, and he does that when he kisses you, too, because that's how he feels about you. Arms up, behind your head. He doesn't kiss like his dad does in the photos and on TV, with the arms low, and I think that's a really important detail to add in, 'cuz like, Anti-Fairies are always born with set personality profiles, and they're always supposed to inherit a combination of their parents' physical traits too, see. Y'know, 'cuz of how karmic balances are passed down through families. Anyway, that's why this best friend was born with a limp in his wing even though there's nothing wrong with him. He inherited the limp and the accent from his dad, but not the way he kisses, see. That's all him. So- So-"

Anti-Marigold brought her hands, pizza and all, to her hair and clenched a pigtail in either fist. "So you know he really, really likes you enough to go out of his way and figure out how to be a good kisser, because Anti-Fairies don't _do_ that. Anti-Fairies are traditional because they have to be. It's how they are, but your friend's _not_. He's different, and before you were 150,000 you thought you loved him and you were gonna marry him, but let's say there's politics and rules, and he was confusing as sometimes about if you were his girlfriend or not or how much he likes you, and it's starting to get heaps serious, but he still won't just tell you if you're his girlfriend or try to break up with you, and his parents don't know about this, and they're trying to get him to like this other girl who isn't a wisp, and you hear about them in the news all the time, and when you're at the grocery store, they're on half the magazine covers, and when you go out to eat you can see them holding hands on the pizza parlor TV, and everyone always talks about how cute and perfect and karmaically balanced they are, and now it feels like you're cheating on her because this sort-of boyfriend still invites you to his castle for ceremonies and movie nights or he comes to see you sometimes when he can slip away, but it's not like he comes a lot, but he's always so confusing about if he likes you or if he likes her, and he's got another personality too so y'all don't even know how much you can trust the media, and everything just keeps getting really complicated, and he talks like he wants you but you're not really sure how much, or anything." She looked up. "What would y'all do?"

Wanda watched her in silence, studying her eyes. Anti-Marigold felt her cheeks cool with a soft flush. Maybe she'd said a little too much.

"How much do you know about the Fairywinkle family?" Wanda asked.

"Not like tons." Not much more than that being Wanda's family name.

Wanda puckered her lips. "Well. Dusty Fairywinkle was a drake born into a very particular lifestyle. He was expected to live a certain way and raise a certain kind of family. His parents even picked a wife out for him. She was young, shy, and didn't ask too many questions. Raised strictly Daoist, like him. It was all arranged, and everyone agreed."

"Except Dusty?"

She sighed. "He had a mistress."

Four words. Sharper from a Fairy tongue than an Anti-Fairy one. "Oh," Anti-Marigold said. She lowered her gaze, gripping her pizza crust in her fist. "I guess she was maybe, uh, a will o' the wisp?"

Wanda nodded slowly.

Anti-Marigold had always suspected that sort of heritage; Anti-Wanda, after all, had flat teeth like an anti-wisp instead of the usual bat-like fangs. Not to mention the small ears that left her struggling to echolocate, though with more ability to do so than Anti-Marigold herself had.

"And I guess there were nymphs? From the wisp mistress?"

Wanda's fingers tightened around her mug so her thumb squeaked along its wet surface. "Two damsels. Twins. Everyone just assumed they were his wife's, that it happened on the honeymoon. Including him. At first. The two girls were identical, pink-eyed and brown-haired, wings translucent like a dragonfly's. No one dared to question it, even though behind the scenes and in front of those girls, they were always saying, 'fairies only give their souls away once'. It wasn't right, a fairy who tried to do it twice."

"Oh yeah. You fairies don't really do that divorce thing."

"And the stealing, the life of crime, it all started so small," Wanda murmured, her expression growing distant. "A fairy with two identical daughters. The perfect disguise, as long as the public believed he only… had… one."

She had bowed her head so Anti-Marigold couldn't see her eyes behind her sweeping hair. But the set of her clenched teeth and the tears tracking down either side of her face declared her emotions as though she'd run them up a flagpole. Anti-Marigold scratched behind her neck.

"I didn't know all that." It was the only thing she could think to say, y'know, trying to be polite and not just ask, "So, what does any of this have to do with me and my problems?"

"And how much do you know about Ilisa Maddington?" Wanda asked, finally raising her head.

Anti-Marigold shrugged. "Anti-Ilisa is one of my ancestors. Obviously, first anti-wisp and all. Ilisa was supposed to be a fairy-brownie crossbreed, but something went wrong. Instead of dragonfly wings, she was born with scaly butterfly ones. It didn't make a lick a' sense, sheila. No one understood it. But her counterpart was born with six-spot burnet moth wings, and so it went."

"And her original nine children? Before the Eros Nest turned her into a…"

Good breeding, so to speak, prevented Wanda from saying 'nymph factory', but the implication remained.

"Eight drakes," Anti-Marigold recited. "Fennel, Kace, and Leander were the only three to carry her wings. Wisp wings are exceptions to the usual inheritance rules; it's a coin flip to see if the mother will pass them on. Ilisa's only daughter of that time, Lyrica Posy, got the wings too. I'm descended from Lyrica through her firstborn, Anti-Oka Anti-Posy."

"Fennel," Wanda said, pointing her thumb at her chest. She looked up towards the ceiling and sighed. "I just worry so much about Poof. It was before your time, but fairies used to be prevented from having nymphs. Now that the ban is lifted again, my baby can have his own family. If he chooses a will o' the wisp, then he chooses a will o' the wisp."

"Anti-wisps are built to be mamas," Anti-Marigold murmured. She pressed her hand against her abdomen. "We're meant to be taller than this. Y'know, than… than me. We've got four pouches. They're small, but it's kind of necessary. Since our counterparts like drakes so much, we gotta be able to be pregnant at any time. But I know better than to get attached. I mean." Here she looked up again. "Since wisp damsels kill their damsel nymphs who don't carry will o' the wisp wings, and all."

Wanda closed her eyes. "Well, yes. Let's see if I can remember my old schooling. Sometimes, wisp brains struggle to recognize their own nymphs if they don't look like them. They like the butterfly wings. If a nymph doesn't have the genes, they're a rival and are removed so they don't grow up to steal the drakes from the…"

She paused.

All of a sudden, in the front room, Goldie stood. "The word you're looking for is 'dotties'," she said crisply, and left down the stairs. Jalla twisted his upper body around to watch her go. A door shut softly in the basement. What an eavesdropper!

Even though the term 'butterfly daughters' was considered a purist slur and had faded out of use long before she was born, Anti-Marigold had to fight to suppress her shiver. Will o' the wisp _drakes_ always produced nymphs with butterfly wings, the nymph's wings always the same color as their father's eyes, or at least for the most part. Certain Fairy subspecies were considered more desirable by wisps than others. But the underlying detail remained: High risk. High reward. For a wisp, the best case scenario was to produce a crossbred fairy drake nymph… with butterfly wings. By law, they were called will o' the wisps- graceful, beautiful, and intelligent instead of matching the stereotype of being inbred and stupid. _Fill the population. Swell the ranks that the floods so rapidly depleted…_

Drakes who didn't carry the butterfly wings were favored too, simply for their intimate passion when compared to the dull wisp drake alternative. But Wanda was right. Wisp damsels killed their daughters who didn't carry the desired wings. It was in their nature. It was in their blood. Everyone said so. They even taught that kind of stuff in school. Anti-Marigold had dropped out hardly a dozen years into Spellementary, but even she knew that. Wisp damsels ruled their drake harems and desired their dotties to reproduce widely too. Non-dotties…

It was instinct. That's all. Or at least, Anti-Marigold told herself that, because she didn't dare think on the matter too hard or long.

Wanda picked up the last plate and dipped it beneath the bubbles. As she did, Anti-Marigold studied the dragonfly wings down her back. They were thicker than those of most fairies, the swirling patterns intricate and stunning.

"You're scared, sheila. But y'all decided to give my counterpart the chance with your son anyhow. Why, even when you know she might…?"

"Don't get me wrong. I was nervous about your counterpart at first, and I'm still a little nervous." Wanda sighed. "But, my Daddy didn't want me to marry Cosmo. Cosmo's mama didn't want him to marry me. And yet, we're happy. That's what I want for Poof. I don't want him to run off and elope like I did. I want to be there to support his family, and I want him to know that Cosmo and I will always love and do our best to support him, no matter what decisions he makes. Even if that includes falling in love with a will o' the wisp."

She paused from her scrubbing. For a moment, Wanda just stared through the window and through the falling snowflakes at the shed. Her knuckles tightened around the plate. "I do wish Poof hadn't fallen in love with her. But I would never want to tear your counterpart away from him. That's why I told you this." She glanced back. "Anti-Marigold, I like to think of myself as a bright and cheery fairy. I want to believe in true love, and that things will work out in the end. I always try to hold on, no matter how tough it gets or how much it hurts. In fact, that's my core trait."

 _"Oh."_ Anti-Marigold placed her fingertips to her forehead. "Wow. So you mean, that's your… that's your… Gee. Thanks for sharing that with me. I know it's extra personal in your Fairy culture, and it means a lot to hear it, y'know?"

Wanda nodded and finally set the plate in the drying rack. She reached down and yanked the plug from the sink. The bubbles began to drain away. "I think that if you're confused about where you stand with, uh, Anti-Poof, you should go and talk to him right now. It's getting late and it's a long flight to the nearest stable patch of the energy field, so he can't exactly run away from you." It was dark enough outside that when Wanda glanced up at the window, Anti-Marigold could see her pink eyes reflecting with a pale glow. "And, well… Anti-Wanda and I share the same core trait, remember. That's how it works. We both want what's best for you, without putting our worries in the way. If you ever wanted to talk to her about these things, I'm sure she'd understand."

Anti-Marigold drifted up behind the fairy, and untucked her hands from her sweatshirt pocket. She slid her arms around Wanda and gave her a brief hug. "Thanks, sheila. I think I'll see if I can take him out for a chat right now."

"Best of luck."

Cosmo jogged past her on his way up the stairs, pausing to size up the winged tiger on her hoodie in the process. "It's not mine," Anti-Marigold told him quickly, pressing herself against the wall so he could squeeze through (Curse the Delkian tendency for long, spiraled steps that were so close together, they were practically a ramp).

"I don't judge," he said with a pleasant shrug, and scooted by. One room in the basement had been stuffed full of cushions and bunk beds. Some kind of video game console was hooked into the small TV. The indents in the cheerful beanbags in front of it - not to mention the bags of corn chips and pretzels - confirmed that Cosmo had been down here for awhile and only just left. Probably, he'd gone to urge Jalla back to their racing game, which still displayed the victory banner for Player 2 across the lower half of the screen, along with a great deal of confetti and music. Either that, or Foop had snapped at him enough times to scare him off.

Foop himself had already laid claim to the bunk below what was obviously Poof's (purple circle pillows and all). He lay partly on the bed and partly on the floor, with his back on the ground and his feet kicked in the air. Well, that made sense; they'd both been oriented upright for hours today, and he was probably getting dizzy. He was still grading papers even so, scribbling in comments between _tsk tsk_ s and nods of his head. His reading glasses balanced on his nose. The lenses were tinted violet. They reflected the pale light of the spiraled nightstand lamp in an odd way, sprinkling the floor with little rainbows in the dark. It took him a moment to notice her at the doorway, but when he did, he glanced up. His mustache twitched at the ends.

"I will admit, I expect to get a good nap tonight. It's pleasant to be allowed to sleep in a bed rather than be forced to dangle precariously from a roost. Don't you agree?"

"Yeesh. One of us actually has the ability to hang upside-down for hours on end, and he turns his little round nose up at it. Whatever are we gonna do with y'all, mate?"

He attempted a shrug and went back to his papers. "Support me and my politics, I imagine."

"Probably." She felt along the base of the wall lamp, searching for the switch. "Can we go talk about some stuff?"

"We can talk here," he said without looking up. He tapped his pen against his snaggletooth, then marked out an entire paragraph with dripping purple ink, and chuckled. "I'm listening."

No he wasn't. Anti-Marigold cleared her throat, which did actually flick his attention to her. "I'd rather we went somewhere private. No distractions. Can we go for a walk? Maybe outside?"

Foop blinked. His head tilted back against the floor as he looked her over again. Then his ears tried to go up. "Oh! Walking. You mean, through the forest. With all the trees." The reading glasses came off. He started to slide them into his back pocket, then changed his mind and tossed them on his pillow instead, along with his pen and papers. "Wow. Conifers will be an interesting choice, but, um, certainly. Lead the way."

In the ectothermic chamber at the cabin's rear, Anti-Marigold grabbed her water blue scarf from its hook and tossed him his red one, and his black coat. She'd knitted the scarves with bright, colorful yarn because she liked them that way, even though these kinds of things had to be done hush-hush. After all, she was born in the Year of Leaves, and if she were going to be wearing any color, it was supposed to be green, and only for fancy ceremony stuff. Sometimes she had enough of green, and red looked _so_ good on him.

They left through the screen door, once again shouting back to Wanda that they were just going out for a bit. It had gotten darker out. The sky had clouded over, blocking out most of the stars and moons. They stood beneath a slanted overhang that sparkled with dozens of claw-like icicles. Could you get icicles on a planet that wasn't supposed to warm up enough for snow to turn to water and drip? Sure, why not? Anti-Marigold inhaled the falling snowflakes and wrapped her scarf tighter by yanking both ends. "I like the weather out here."

"It is nice," he agreed, stroking his mustache. "Though, frankly my preferences tend a little more towards lakes of fire and the tortured screams of acid victims."

"You charming old devil."

"I am one, aren't I?"

As they left the shelter of the cabin's overhang and started up the hill towards the nearest stretch of woods, she glanced back over her shoulder. "Hey, you're the science man. Where d'ya think the trees came from when this whole planet's supposed to be snowy all year round?"

"Hmm…" Foop studied the evergreens, but in the end simply shrugged and reached out to slide his arm behind her neck. "I'm not familiar with this type. We are on a different planet, after all. Things develop different ways of surviving up here compared with what you see on Earth or back home."

Anti-Marigold kicked a heap of powder with her boot as they walked, half surprised it hadn't turned out to be ice underneath. How thick was this stuff, and how did the Delkians ever stand it enough to live here full-time? She'd heard from Poof once that they hadn't been the planet's most dominant species until relatively recently. Technically, "Delkians" wasn't even their real species name, but Anti-Marigold didn't know what it was. The centipede people had simply grown powerful enough to challenge the previously dominant species and seize control of the planet, and since godparents were only supposed to be assigned to members of a planet's dominant species, here they were now.

There wasn't exactly a trodden path to follow, but they found a section of woods with wider spaces between the trees than most everywhere else. Anti-Marigold stared at the gray sky, fists in her pockets and tongue in her cheek. After several minutes, she became aware of the burning of Foop's eyes on the top of her head. She turned. Their gazes linked. He blinked at her, holding her in place, and then shifted his look above her head. "How about that one?" he asked, nodding towards a tree behind her with his chin. "Doesn't it look like that upper branch on the right would hold our weight while we, you know, go about it and all?"

"While we go about…" Anti-Marigold's eyes flew wide. She ducked away from the arm he'd placed around her shoulders. "Foop! We're not out here looking for a tree to _make out in!"_

He arched both eyebrows. "Really? Then why did you haul me out here barefoot?"

The protests froze on her lips. Anti-Marigold slid her gaze down to the warm boots on her feet. Foop stared back at her, arms crossly folded. His coat's open halves fell to either side of him. Snowflakes caught in his mustache and the fur around his eyes. Ever since Poof had moulted into his adult wings and Foop had likewise gained his adult body, his pilot freckles had become such a bright purple, they practically glowed. With his cheeks turning pink from the cold, they showed up especially.

"I'm- sorry. I didn't think."

"You never think," he huffed.

"Yeah… That's why I wanna talk to you."

"Can we do it while we bundle? Seriously, I'm going to lose my tail if I stay out here too long." He looked at her expectantly, then fluffed up the fur around his neck. " _Brrr_. Either that, or we have to head back in. The shed we passed over there is an option, I suppose, if it really is important we keep our voices down and away from the nosy crowd."

"Uh…" Anti-Marigold glanced around. The woods were thin enough that they didn't keep off much of the snow. One of the nearest trees sprouted from a rock crag, clutching the pointed stone between its roots like an egg held above a mixing bowl. Despite the planet's constant cold, the spot was just sheltered enough from the winds that a patch of dirt had been left behind; the snow was deep everywhere else, but only to their knees somehow. It wasn't ideal, but at least they wouldn't be sitting in the snow itself. She motioned towards it with her wing. "There. We can bundle over there."

Foop watched her for an extra second too long. Anti-Marigold fully expected him to scoff and call her names for not retreating to the warmer cabin. But, obediently, he walked over and sat down with his back placed against the tall stone.

"Well, get over here, seriously."

Anti-Marigold did, adjusting her scarf. Foop held his arms open for an embrace. She settled on his lap, accepting the hug, and let him bring her head beneath his chin. Once she had, he wrapped both their bodies in his wings as much as possible. The bottoms scraped against her lower back. "Okay. So, what's so important to talk about that you didn't want to do it in the pleasant cabin?" He squinted. "And why do I smell candy canes?"

She winced. "Oh yeah. I was peppering with Poof for awhile out behind the shed."

Foop shook his head in apparent disbelief. His hands slid down her wings to rest against her lower back. "That stuff will give you cramps, you know."

"Fight me," she muttered, clutching her hands close to her chest.

"I'd rather talk." His mustache twitched up on one side. "Really, are you going to tell me what this is about, or not?"

Anti-Marigold stared at the freckles along his collar. Then she said, "Yeah. Here's the spill. Y'all always give me weird signals, about if we're a couple, or about how close we are, and that sort of quack. So, I want y'all to tell me straight." Anti-Marigold raised her eyes. "Do you love me?"

"Love you?" Foop said the phrase like he might have said, _Curses, this bitter cold froze the ink in my pen again_. He scrunched up his nose. "Hmm…" His gaze wandered in a circle, then met hers again. Her ears quirked forward. Slowly, he leaned his head down, apparently waiting to see if she would close her eyes. Once she did, he pressed his lips between hers. His were dry and wrinkled. Were hers dry and wrinkled like that too?

She let him do his thing. They moved together a hint deeper, cold snow and cold mouths, until Anti-Marigold tasted a familiar combination of brass and strawberry ice cream on her tongue. After extending the kiss for another few seconds, Foop drew his lips back. His nose wrinkled.

"You taste like peppermint too. Ah. There. Now, does that answer your question?"

"It- No!" Anti-Marigold placed her hands on his chest and pushed herself away from him as far as she could manage, until he frowned and tightened his wings to keep her from jumping up. "I'm so confused. Foop, why are we doing this? Why is it y'all kiss and cuddle me like this? You're supposed to be courting Anti-Coriander."

"I _am_ courting Anti-Coriander."

"Both of us?" She shook her head, bumping his chin in the process. Her fingers clenched in the front of his dark blue sweater vest. "Does it ever worry you? Do y'all ever wonder if we're all too young for this?"

Foop started to curl his lip, then loosened it so it turned into more of a pout. "I'm a Fairykind biologist. Poof came into his adult wings at 143,555. He's had his adult body ever since, and so have I. 6,500 years of hormones is a lot, and that isn't even including the nightmare of my juvenile years. You should be thanking me for restraining myself up until recently."

"But dating, courting, kissing, singing- this stuff is all heaps serious." Anti-Marigold cleared her throat. "Foop, that night we paired up… Y'all glanced over your shoulder at me on the couch and just casually dropped something like, 'We both know that sooner or later, our idiot counterparts are going to get us honey-locked,' and, 'It might be nice if our first time was something we both chose and wanted'. But what does it mean? Where do I stand with you?"

Pause. Anti-Marigold blinked snowflakes from her eyelashes. Foop didn't blink when he stared back.

"Well… I suppose it might be accurate to say that for the most part, I don't _not_ like you…"

"But?"

He shifted her weight between his legs. "You're an anti-will o' the wisp. By matter of default, you're destined to be a harem girl. That's just what happens to you, what with your flirty counterparts and all- I mean, as Idona Ivorie's apprentice and the intended future wisp ambassador, Goldie's already got half a dozen drakes lined up for her, I'm sure. And you know the people won't want to accept a High Countess who can't even do something simple such as hanging upside-down."

"You don't hang upside-down," she pointed out.

Foop's eyes narrowed to violet slits. Briefly they flickered, and Anti-Marigold thought the light lingered too long for a moment, reflecting especially harshly off his pupils. Hiccup? But no. Foop's face smoothed out. He said, "I _can_. I simply choose not to when I don't have to. It isn't safe to place ourselves in precarious locations when there are two of us in this body. All too easily, we could fall when we shift."

Traces of Hiccup flickered across his eyes again, to the point where he shook his head - hard - and clenched his fangs to hold him back. Anti-Marigold folded her arms as best as she could manage. "Y'all spent all those extra years in your exoskeleton, and your body's instincts got all tangled up. Y'all can't really hang better than I can."

"Ah, but I can still lock my feet in place and manage it for hours on end." His eyebrow went up. "I have fangs, I have claws, I have opposable toes, and I'm of noble blood. You're just an anti-wisp. Even if Goldie and Poof are together, and even if we honey-lock, even if my mother has dropped hints that she'd support it, you'll never be High Countess."

"But?" she urged again. She glanced down for a second to finger a loop in his sweater vest.

"But…" Foop tugged one end of his mustache. "No. It simply won't work. The people, you see, do not much like going against tradition."

The people. It was always "people" with nobles. Anti-Marigold frowned. She shifted in his lap, gripping his sides with her hands. Gently, she pressed her thumbs beneath his armpits. He resisted her for nearly eight seconds, his head tilted down, watching her in twitching silence, until he couldn't fight the urge any longer and squirmed his wings. Once she had him, Anti-Marigold leaned forward. "The people went against tradition when your papa overthrew the Anti-Coppertalon line. They went against tradition when he excused you from your Tarrow betrothal. They went against tradition for a lot of things he wanted. Why change for y'all, and not me?"

A bead of sweat or saliva formed on Foop's lower lip. He licked it away. "If- if the people reacted poorly to the news… See, sometimes the High Countess is targeted during times of war or threats of war because… When there's paperwork… If you were living in the Castle all the time… You and me…"

"Y'all are ashamed of being seen with me," she realized. Not that it was actually new, or a surprise, so the words felt dry as a cow pie on her tongue.

"I don't want you to get hurt," he corrected. But was it the right correction? He seemed like he was struggling to meet her eyes. If nothing else, that confirmed he wasn't Hiccup.

"You don't really care about me, mate." Anti-Marigold tried to lean away. His wings pulled her close again with a jerk.

"That's not true." Foop searched her face for the answer, then slumped his shoulders. His fingers tightened at her waist. "Why don't we meld for a moment? I'll show you exactly what you are to me."

Well. Why not? Anti-Marigold leaned her forehead against his, closing her eyes. She flexed her wrists. A cold glimmer spread behind her eyes and down to her feet, as though she'd eaten too much ice cream all too fast. Her vision blurred with writhing streaks of green, then took on color and form.

There she was, in his eyes, tucking stray black hairs behind her ear as she leaned over a scroll of notes he had just placed in her lap. Rather short and thin, quiet like a shadow, a tendency to be submissive at social gatherings. Typical of someone born in a Leaves year. She wore her black tank top with its dark purple straps against her pale blue-violet body, even though sweatshirts like Hiccup's made her feel so much more comfortable. But those earned her scathing looks. An anti-wisp in a hoodie? How cute, how pathetic, how laughable, to think that she could pretend to be something she wasn't. She didn't deserve it. Even among the Anti-Fairies, who claimed to be above and against the racism that ran rampant through Fairy society, everyone had their place.

No. The rest of Anti-Fairy culture, with its fine jackets, vests, and coats, wasn't meant to be hers. Wisps were promiscuous, so anti-wisps were baby-bearers and, all too frequently, single mothers of enormous broods. They couldn't echolocate, and they couldn't even hang upside-down for long. Their counterparts were considered beautiful temptresses, and anti-wisps were washed-up prostitutes and desperate strippers past their prime. No one wanted them for serious marriage, and had no choice when the honey-lock was in play. They should at least try to make themselves attractive. A bit of a shirt cut low here, a flash of tail there, and never sleeves on the arms if you didn't want to face the sneers and, in more than one historical case, actual aggression and the tearing of clothes. _You can't be wearing that. You think you're better than the rest of us? Don't be such a special snowflake. It's your fate, it's decided, just accept your destiny, this is Tarrow's chosen path for your kind, that's why your counterparts were given their seductive instincts._ So on and so forth.

Foop didn't see her like that.

In Foop's mind, she was a dark leaf clinging to a twig in a storm. Winds howled and rain beat, but she stood like a lighthouse anyway. True, she dressed less modestly than her natural inclination to, with her love of fuzzy sweaters and soft hats, and a borrowed saucerbee jacket here and there. She let herself get pushed around at times, bowing her head and going along with the insistence of the crowd just to avoid the discourse. She was a very timid lighthouse.

But today she wore Hiccup's sweatshirt, and Foop thought it fit her so well. He didn't just love the shape of it on her figure, the way it curved over her waist, though it would be a lie, Anti-Marigold realized with a sigh of amusement, to argue that he hadn't noticed. But Foop's attention was higher up her body too, lingering on her face. Because he had noticed the way she walked, more comfortable in this than in the usual clothes she wore beyond her apartment door. Up here on Delki with no other Anti-Fairies around, there was no one to judge the way she wanted to dress, no one to protest she wasn't conforming to the stereotypes that meant everything in Anti-Fairy culture, and especially for someone of the submissive Leaves year on the zodiac. Up here she stood with confidence, her head held high and a constant beam lighting up her countenance. It turned his head and made his stare linger. When she was relaxed and happy instead of uncertain and cringing, that's when he was attracted to her most.

She knew what it felt like to be in Foop's head and smile when she saw herself float into the Poofypants cafeteria, a visitor's badge on her shirt and a paper bag of greasy fast food in her fist. She knew the brush of her fingertips against the soft part of his palm when their hands slipped together, almost accidentally, as they floated around the grocery store. She knew their first kiss, the small edge of his hand brushing against the apple of her cheek. They'd still been young juveniles, innocently experimenting with their sloppy mouths in the cupboard below Denzel Crocker's kitchen sink- the kooky man, oblivious, continued stringing up the Valentine's Day decorations in preparation for the trap he planned to spring on Cupid. Yes, she knew some things, some glimpses, but not the whole story.

And not enough. Nevertheless, the meld faded in a swirl of green smoke. Foop opened his eyes.

"That's me. All cards on the table." He stared at her, a challenge gleaming in his eyes.

Anti-Marigold bowed her head. "Foop, when we melded… y'all left out the memories of what it felt like… when we paired. What did that mean to you?"

He frowned, but didn't protest as she brought her forehead back to his. Another swirl of green crossed her vision. That night, the den, the TV, from a different point of view. The two of them clumsy in their pajamas and smirking as they tried to settle their wings. "Sorcery Hall" played in the background, though her own upside-down head - viewed through Foop's eyes - blocked most of the screen. There had been so many awkward kisses, their right hands clasped together almost the whole time, like you do.

And there it was. His hands were suddenly lower on her back as he waited for a signal that he was permitted to remove a bit of clothing now. She'd simply reached for her nickel wand and _poof_ ed all his own clothes away. After all, it was her first time; they were kind of in a rush, both nervously aware that within the hour, Foop would be expected up the hall for dinner, and someone would be making the rounds to find their prince if he didn't show.

 _I'm doing this,_ Foop's memories all seemed to crow. _This is happening. It's Kelsia. Let's hope I do this right._ Jumbled stuff like that. Nothing especially meaningful, especially emotional. Nothing especially about her. Just that she'd delighted him enough to proceed the way he wanted to. Anti-Marigold pulled their forehead apart and sighed.

Foop cleared his throat. He reached one hand up to smooth his curls. "Yes, well. That was how it went. I like you as a girlfriend, Anti-Marigold. Just not as a wife."

"What does that even mean?" she muttered.

He shrugged, stroking his thumb along her shoulder. "You know everyone wants me to end up with Anti-Coriander. I'm a budding Breath year scientist, she's a Leaves year doctor in training. We're archetypes of the opposite zodiac's nature spirit. Winni, the Breath medicine man. Thurmondo, the Leaves inventor. By that logic, Anti-Coriander and I are the perfect balance. The karma that comes out of that union would be amazing. It just doesn't make sense to court you seriously. You can be my girlfriend, but not my High Countess. That's just the way it is."

"If that's all it meant, then y'all can't keep leading me on like this. It's not fair."

Foop's mustache twitched hard in time with an apparent mental snap. "No one expects Hiccup to woo Anti-Coriander if he doesn't want to. Why should I be left with that obligation? Why shouldn't I have you?"

"Because it's not fair." Anti-Marigold clenched her fists against her eyes. "You're supposed to court Anti-Coriander, you're supposed to marry Anti-Coriander, you're supposed to be High Count with Anti-Coriander as your High Countess. You'll be busy leading the Anti-Fairies. You aren't going to have any time left for me, except when we honey-lock. Because we will someday. I guarantee it." She raised her head. "Foop, I can't keep kissing you if y'all don't care about me. I paired that night, because… it was supposed to really mean something special. I mean, I liked it okay, I guess, but I wasn't really ready for that kind of stuff, and I don't really get what the big deal about touching like that is anyway. But I did it, for _y'all_."

He drummed his claws against her hips, frowning. Then he sighed through his nostrils in a puff of white. "Would it make you happy if I act more affectionately towards you?"

Anti-Marigold recoiled. "What? Crikey, mate, are y'all only asking that because y'all wanna keep me around to hang off your arm and kiss your slobbery mouth every time you're in the mood for it?"

Foop blinked in a distracted sort of way. He flicked both his ears down, concentrated for a second as though fighting to keep Hiccup restrained, and then pricked his ears up again. "It was nice of you to agree to come all the way out here to Delki with me. That agreeable behavior should be reinforced. However you want it reinforced, you need only to ask. I'm a prince, and soon to be ruler of the universe, you know. Tell me what you want, and consider it done."

She knew he meant it. Foop was a lot of things, but he wasn't much a secret keeper and he wasn't much a liar. Two traits that against all odds, he actually did have in common with his fairy counterpart. He waited, perhaps slightly uneasy, holding her with both his arms and his wings. With a soft scuff, he pulled his knees in a bit, and held her in place that way too.

"You're stalling," he noted.

"I can't really think of anything I want…"

His claws clenched in her back, and a sneer took form on his face. Foop flicked a bit of snow from his ear. "Don't play these games, Kelsia. Everyone wants something."

She squirmed. "I mean, I like y'all, I guess… I like hanging out. I kinda just wanna keep being your friend. When y'all move on to Anti-Coriander for reals and take your daddy's place, I don't wanna get shoved to the side and forgotten except for when the honey-lock kicks in."

"So what do you want?" Foop urged, sitting up straighter. "Is it money? Power? I can pay you any price you ask, but you have to realize I can't just give you the High Countess seat. Tell me, what makes you tick, Anti-Marigold?"

He studied her, the way he'd studied all those Fairykind he'd tried to dissect in the past. The leprechaun, the nix, that pixie…

Anti-Marigold decided to answer him plainly, unemotionally, and looking him dead on. "I need a pleasant place to stay. I want somewhere nice. A cottage, something. Not another apartment complex. Maybe not heaps far from your Castle if y'all really think we'll be honey-locking much. And when there's a pup someday - if there's a pup someday - I want y'all to visit even when we ain't locked." She hadn't meant to cry, but those words rasped in her throat. "Y'all are my best friend, ya both. Sure, the Hiccup bit of y'all is neat and nice, but you, Foop… Gods, your brains are brilliant as. I love listening to the chatter going on up in there. Can't we still be friends? Don't let us ever be strangers. That's all I ask."

Foop considered this as he stroked his goatee. "That will add up to a lot of time and resources to spend on a mere friend."

Anti-Marigold steadied her thoughts. "Well? You don't intend to make me your wife, even if our counterparts are together. I mean, I know the Countess doesn't always have to be married to the Count, but if y'all are so sure the people won't accept me, maybe we…"

He laughed. He threw his head back and laughed at her, while she gaped open-mouthed in his lap. His fingers pinched deeper into her waist, through her hoodie and shirt until they pricked her thin fur. "Anti-Marigold, the thought! The High Count, with an anti-wisp for a wife! Haven't we been over this enough?" Foop brought his attention back down to her, and leaned his head close with a smirk. "It. Will. Never. Happen."

Anti-Marigold held his gaze as their foreheads pressed together, until she finally had to drop her eyes back to the collar of his shirt. She leaned against his shoulder. He was warmer than she was, his fur pale blue and his coat unzipped enough that she could wiggle her hands between it and his body. She said, "So you do intend to marry Anti-Coriander one of these days, then."

Foop shrugged. "I haven't thought it out in full quite yet. True, everyone expects it of me, and my father will flip if he ever finds out an anti-wisp and I, well, _did it_ unlocked, but my marriage partner still is and always will be my choice. I have time to think it over. There's always a chance Poof and Goldie will still break up. In which case, my High Countess might be whomever he picks up next. If not, I'll have to do some looking for a good wife on my own."

The bitter words sprang- "An Anti-Fairy wife, or a Seelie one?"

He jerked back his head, ears flying up. "Are you actually suggesting now that I'm into _Fairies?_ I'll have you know, Kelsia, I certainly feel-"

"You're still attracted to Goldie," Anti-Marigold pointed out, lifting her head from his shoulder. "You like her. Not me."

"That's different," Foop protested. A deep, twanging chord snuck into his voice. He pulled his knees (and her) in closer, bumping their noses in the process. "Anti-Marigold, I'm not, as you would say, 'in love' with Goldie. Simply, Goldie is a delicate, flighty thing, and I long to see her brought under my control." He clenched his fists. "I just… think it would be interesting, that's all. You know, if she ever kissed me the way she kisses Poof. Just once. Goldie is, well, a fascinating subject I'm forbidden to have. Naturally, I'm curious to know what she's like, how she compares to you. Such a shame I never made another move on her before we got our adult bodies and the actual realities of Rhoswen syndrome became an honest risk. I really should have taken advantage of her, but… Well. Everyone has felt the desire to get with their partner's counterpart at some point; it's just a natural part of Fairykind attraction."

"Not for me!" Anti-Marigold almost threw up in his face then and there. _Poof?_ The sweaty saucerbee player, the holier-than-thou vegan, the peppermint addict? How would that even… Where would they… She couldn't even form a picture of the scene in her head. What, so like… Poof, naked and freckled and sweaty, probably high on Smile Dip, his eyes accented with circles of insomnia, leaning over her with his curly purple chest hairs dangling in front of her eyelashes? She thin and exposed on some bed in the Poofypants dorms, acting flirty in the face of his smirks and for some reason supposed to enjoy this? But Anti-Fairies had to be upside… but Fairy parts were… How did… Yeeeahhh. She let the thought drop.

"It doesn't matter," Foop decided. "My thoughts for Goldie are entirely hypothetical. Even I know it would never work. Thus, it would be a waste of time and energy to pursue her." He gave a nonchalant shrug and glanced away, as though to suggest he was above mortal matters like having crushes, but that if Goldie wished to approach him, she knew where he could be found and he would not refuse her advances.

Anti-Marigold nodded wearily. "Well. Even if y'all did win her over, I don't think the people will ever accept a Seelie Courter for a High Countess. Especially a wisp. I mean, yeah. Duh. So if not me, and not Goldie, then you'll have to find some other damsel eventually. Anti-Coriander, right?"

"Technically, the High Countess can be male," Foop let go of her wings and raised his hands, even though his arms were still looped around her. Bringing them both behind her shoulder, he leaned forward and blew on them before he rubbed them briskly together. " _Brrr_. It's a feminine title by tradition, but I looked it up in the old Traditions and Customs book once when Father made me copy out notes for one of my punishments. A male High Countess hasn't happened for a long time, but it's completely acceptable. Hiccup may be…"

He paused, studying the pink and blue tiger on the front of her purple sweatshirt with its one bat wing and one insect wing. But, he avoided using the word "exclosexual" to imply attraction both within the Unseelie Court and across Court boundaries, or even falling back on "bisexual" to explain his alternate personality's blatant fondness for boys as well as girls. Instead, Foop cleared his throat. "Um. Well, Hiccup does prefer drakes to damsels. Perhaps we'll find ourselves a husband instead."

"Do y'all want a husband? Not Hiccup, but you too?"

Foop leaned back his head. "I don't really know."

"So you wanna be single," Anti-Marigold summed up. She pushed one of her pigtails over her shoulder, and almost laughed. But not tonight. Anti-Marigold contented herself with a simple smile. "See? That's perfect. We can still be friends. And your High Countess won't even have a right to get in our way and be jealous of us, if she's not intimate with y'all any more than I am-"

"I don't want to be single," Foop interrupted. "Not really. It's just that I'm not looking forward to the intimacies of marriage. I like casual. I like this." He glanced down at her again, fluttering flakes from the long lashes he'd never quite grown out of. His wings tightened again, covering the area from her shoulders almost to her waist. "Kelsia, when I asked you that night if you wanted to start kissing and just see where things go… and you said sure, as long as we kept the TV on because you were still kind of watching it, and it was almost out of nowhere, and we were both good friends without expecting too much of one another… I really liked that."

This time, instead of laughing, Anti-Marigold had to tighten her teeth to hold back the sob. Her hands clenched beneath his arms. "Foop, I get that! Let's be friends. Pairing together- that was _huge_. Let's pull back from that and forget it ever happened. We can be best friends. You can scry me anytime you're feeling soppy. Maybe sometimes I'll swing by with a plate of waffles, just real short notice. We can invite each other out to lunch, and snuggle when we watch movies together, and I'll come over to hang out, and it doesn't have to mean anything more than friendship. It's perfect! No one said the High Count can't just be _friends_ with an anti-will o' the wisp. I'll…" Anti-Marigold trailed off, watching his hard violet stare. "I'll even let y'all kiss me sometimes, if ya still want to, but…"

Foop tongued his fangs. He considered her again, never avoiding her gaze, never trying to seek it out. He simply looked her up and down.

Then he sighed.

"Kelsia, we _did_ it. Together. You and me. We know each other differently than we used to, and we can't take that back. So, we can't be _just_ friends. You melded with me just a minute ago. You know exactly how I feel about you. I like you in a special way."

"In that y'all don't really like me, but just want to keep me around because you're hormonal and I'm available."

Foop shook his head. " _No_. That would imply you could be just anyone, but you couldn't be. I admire you, for you. I just don't know if I, you know, love you yet."

"See? Crikey, this is why we gotta talk about this stuff." She placed her hands to his shoulders. "Do y'all like me, or don't ya?"

His eyes flickered briefly again, but still not to the point where he shifted into Hiccup. Foop brought one hand up to his head and pulled at the larger of his two great black curls. "Kelsia, I'm trying to look at this from a practical standpoint. We _did_ it. We actually… You know what I mean."

"Blitzed. You can say 'blitz'."

Foop made a face. "Well, sooner or later, our counterparts will do it too. Then we'll honey-lock, and that will be me, you… _unclothed_ … So you see, I really don't want us to separate. I simply…" He tugged his curl again. "Anti-Marigold, you're dear to me. I _want_ to love you. However, I don't think I do. Not yet. I need more time to figure it out, but I ask that you don't just leave me. I don't want things to be awkward between us when inevitably we meet again."

Silence.

"Well. It's awkward between us now. You not really liking me and stuff."

Foop stared at her a moment, his head cocked. Then he swept forward, his eyes zeroing in on her mouth.

"What are you doing?" Anti-Marigold protested, leaning as far away as his wings allowed her to. She blocked him with her arms. "First y'all tell me you don't love me, now you're trying to kiss me?"

"I like…" Foop pulled back, scowling, and made swirly bouncing gestures with both hands. " _This_. See, this is what I'm trying to explain. I _do_ like you, Anti-Marigold. A lot, in fact."

She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "You like the part of me that paired with you."

He cringed. The thumbclaw on one of his wings caught in her scarf, and she reached back to disentangle it as he pressed, "Kelsia, don't make it sound like a- like a _wife_ is all you are to me. You're _more_ to me than just someone to woo and breed with! Your personality is fascinating. Your interests are entertaining. You're witty and wild, and rather clever even though you aren't anywhere near as intelligent as I am. I don't… I don't stop liking you when we stop, um, singing together. I like all of you."

Anti-Marigold slit her eyes. "Even the part that used to copy off your homework back in Spellementary?"

A wistful smile traced across his lips. "Oh, every now and again. Your dirty cheating and careless determination are very attractive."

"What about the part of me that knits y'all dumb scarves and hats every year for Christmas?"

"I like that part too. You know, you've never forgotten to sew me something or other even once since we were two thousand."

"What about the awkward part that sneaks around the sidelines at parties sucking on melon chunks and picking the crusts off the little finger sandwiches?"

"That one too."

She shook her head in disbelief. "You like all those parts of me, but you still only care about my body. Right?"

Foop pushed his claws through his hair again. "See, there you go again, turning this against me. I like you _fine_ , Kelsia. I simply mean that you're my friend. I don't know yet if I'm in _love_ with you, but whenever we kiss, that's something special to me. And when I lit your eyes…" He settled his gaze on hers again. He squeezed her with his knees and wings. "That meant everything, you know. That it was you."

Anti-Marigold tried to press down her flushing. With all the snow falling around their little niche, and the wind blowing at their faces, maybe he'd think it was just her outsides getting cold.

"You're my dearest friend," Foop went on, reaching out to hold her hand against her knee. His claws tightened. "I gave that part of myself to you. That's special. You're special. We can't pretend that didn't happen… But we can't really pretend that you have a chance of being High Countess, either. It wouldn't work. People would mock us, maybe try to overthrow me. It wouldn't be safe for either of us."

She sighed. "Okay, but again, it sounds to me like y'all only like me when we sing together."

He winced again at the accusation and shook his head. "It's just _complicated_. I don't know if I want you _enough_. You're asking me to entertain you on a constant basis, and I don't have the ability to do that. I- I can't live in the same Castle as you! Every time our paths crossed in public, we'd just remember that this isn't all of us, that- that we act intimate and foolish like slobbering cherubs behind closed doors." His wings started to slip. Foop covered his face with his hands. "We can't just mate _and_ live together. It would be far too weird. It's disgusting."

Anti-Marigold blinked. "I'm disgusting?"

"No! But… It's like this." He peeked out from between his fingers, wings agitated and rustling against her back again. "Anti-Marigold, you're an enjoyable friend, but I don't want the burden of always sending you Christmas cards, or picking you out Valentines chocolates, or the obligation of spending every holiday or spare moment with you _all the time_. Entertaining you is exhausting. I need personal space!"

She closed her eyes.

"I don't want us to engage in those cutesy romantic things," Foop pressed, his words quickening as he recognized she was mentally pulling away. "Our relationship is fine just the way it is, Kelsia, see? And trying to act so affectionate will only make it weird. I like our friendship like this, how we were just friends who had fun singing together one time. All right, yes. I did love that. It was incredible. I've never felt that way before, like I did with you, and I want to do that again someday. Some future day when we honey-lock, unless you decide to offer me that part of yourself up again sooner. I don't want to lose your kisses. You do realize that you give seriously the most _incredible_ kisses, don't you?"

"I guess…"

Foop brought his hand to the back of her head. She stared at him, blank, until his face relaxed. "I don't want our relationship to ever be about guessing, or jealousy between you and my future High Countess," he whispered. "I like the kind of friendship we've had since we were both square blue babies. Or, well, a square purple-blue baby in your case. I like talking to you. I like your honesty. I like your gentle savagery. You're interesting, and fun. I just always want things to stay… like… _this_."

He sat forward again, this time grabbing her face in both his cold hands. He did not force her, but waited several seconds to allow her the chance to struggle or protest. When she didn't, he lifted her mouth against his. His saliva was warm despite the snow, his lips gentle even when chapped from the cold. He was always so careful with his fangs, so shy about getting them in the way. Ever since their first time, she'd always known him to kiss more with the front of his mouth than the sides because of that- one thing that told him so obviously apart from Hiccup, though she'd never said so.

Thank the stars he wasn't Hiccup. Hiccup's kisses were forward and forceful, bubbly and playful. Foop was a planner, a thinker, an artist. He took his time, gently guiding but never seizing forceful control, and always stroking her skin with his thumb. Today it was her cheek, but sometimes, when they held hands, it would be her knuckles. It was the same gesture he made when he held his wand or pencil as he thought, leaning over a desk full of calculations, observations, and crazy schemes. It was the unconscious movement he made only for something he felt so dedicated to and passionate about.

It was Hiccup who verbally whined when she pulled away too soon, and Foop who would stick out the pouting lip followed by a wistful chuckle. Hiccup who would protest and complain, Foop who would appreciate a challenge and attempt to woo her back. The night they'd paired, she'd been watching him the whole time, feeling his kisses and his movements against hers. Hiccup would want a turn. Of course Hiccup would want a turn… but Hiccup never came out to try and take a turn. Foop stayed. He stayed for her.

Whenever someone accidentally found out about her relationship with the heir to the High Count seat, well, first they were disgusted - or at least annoyed - that their prince would waste his time on an anti-will o' the wisp. Especially in recent years, when Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda had started to publicly favor Anti-Coriander and all her stuffy niceties. And the stuffing in the back of her underwear too- no _way_ was that her real tail bulging beneath her too-thin scrubs.

But when people got over the fact that she was sort of with the heir presumptive of the Anti-Fairies, they always wanted to hear about his personalities. _So like, are they both courting you? Do they get jealous of each other and wrestle for you too? How romantic! Do they ever switch mid-kiss? Oh my gods, I'd love to know what that feels like. Do they kiss differently? So basically you get to have the benefits of two boyfriends without any of the drawbacks. You're so lucky, Anti-Marigold, you have to tell us what it's like…_ Oh, once or twice, Foop had gotten impatient and shoved Hiccup to the background. But _Foop_. Foop always stayed out for her, no matter how much Hiccup complained.

He still tasted like pineapple pizza from earlier.

Anti-Marigold reached up to touch his face too. His fingers tightened against her cheeks. She traced his mustache with her thumb, then let her hand float up to stroke his ear. They were huge bat-like ears, not the simple elfish ones that adorned her face, unable to twitch and echolocate like a "real" Anti-Fairy's. He didn't flinch at her touch, and Anti-Marigold finally closed her eyes to keep the snowflakes out.

Foop disconnected their mouths a long moment later and brought his hands from her face to her shoulders. "That's my reinforcer," he said simply. "I don't want money. I have plenty enough of that without dep _rrr_ iving you of that pitiful paycheck you get from the sandwich shop in Little Olympus. I want power, but barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'm next in line to be High Count anyway. The seat always goes to the firstborn iris unless he either has a pup first, or really screws up total big time."

He brushed his claws against her hair. His eyes rolled up to the drooping snowy tree and jutting stone hanging like a cliff above their heads. "You're my reinforcer, Kelsia. You're my only reinforcer. I have my scientific discoveries, but those are coming along. Someday I'll inherit the position of High Count from my father. I'm already on the way to meeting all my long-term goals. Soon I'll have everything I want. Everything except the accursed desires of this stupid hormonal body."

"You have Anti-Coriander," she murmured, distant and dull. She gripped her upper arms and shivered her wings.

Foop shrugged. "Anti-Coriander's a doctor. I'm a biologist. Every time our parents push us together so we can chat out on the balconies, or so we can practice our Tarrow dance, we discuss matters of science. I do like those conversations. They're really quite stimulating, but I don't like her the way I like you. I enjoy the way she talks, but I'm afraid there's no intimacy there. And I don't expect there to be much of it if she and I ever were to, ah… sing together." He tugged his collar. The purple came back into his cheeks. "Oh, gods. Can you imagine what people would think of me if I decided to be intimate with my High Countess someday? That can't possibly be legal. That's something my parents did, because they're… Well, they're them. But it does seem as though it would violate several codes of ethics, you know what I mean?"

Anti-Marigold tried not to think about it. She'd merely observed Anti-Coriander from a distance, never spoken to her directly. Sure, pairing with Foop hadn't been the biggest thrill of her life, but imagining Anti-Coriander taking her place…

"My relationship with Anti-Coriander is logical, it's technical," Foop went on. "It's expectations, immediate understanding, perfect synchronization, no surprises… and when I'm with her, I really miss your surprises. Anti-Coriander is an encompassing mathematical formula. It's… it's… You just plug in the data, and you get a response out of her, and it's always easy. But Kelsia, _you_ bring something new every day. You're an equation that actually needs to be solved. A new equation, a new situation, a new reaction, every day. You're algebra."

His eyes softened. He brushed aside her dark hair and kissed her forehead this time. "We've gone round and round with all this talk. Have I finally made myself clear? I like you in a certain, special way. Let's just say I 'sort of' love you."

"But…" And she almost started to cry again. Anti-Marigold leaned her forehead against his neck. "Nebula, ya can't just cherrypick. Y'all can't have _her_ company and conversation up there in the Castle, and _my_ kisses and body whenever y'all come out to visit the slummy outskirts. Ya don't just get two damsels. You've gotta choose only one."

Maybe that was selfish. After all, she had Foop. She had Hiccup.

"I can have two girlfriends." Foop said it so matter-of-factly, apparently oblivious to the way the word 'girlfriend' froze the magic in her blood like the frost crystals on his mustache. He leaned back against the jutting rock, pulling her forward by lifting his knees again. "I'm the future High Count, and future ruler of the universe. I _make_ the rules. Ask me for anything. What exactly was it you wanted, again?"

The word had become something guilty now, but she repeated it anyway. "Y'all's resources. I need your money. I need y'all's time. If we ever have a pup, I need y'all's support. I'm not asking y'all abandon your projects to dote on me, but I do need y'all coming by at least every once in awhile. I need y'all's _attention_. Foop, while you've been away in the school dorms, I've been living all by myself in a dinky little apartment just inside Fairy World's Plane 9 border. I'm a greedy pig. My counterpart lives in a simple burrow underground when she's at home, but I gotta have something flashy. I want grand. Not your dreary castle with your stuffy clothes and boring feasts and judgy gargoyles and statues of past High Cs and Cs. I want happy, colorful, partying."

"Colorful?" Foop wrinkled his nose. Then he shrugged his wings. His thumbclaw caught behind her blue scarf again. "No accounting for tastes."

Anti-Marigold lifted her head and stuck out her tongue. "I'm a wildcard teenager and I like to get my freak on. Nip me."

"Then you'll get a grand manor house," he murmured, reaching for her lips again with his. They folded over hers like a tourism pamphlet, and stayed in front of her face just as briefly. Foop drew back, tipping his head. "Very well. While everyone else is out on migration, let's look around together and find somewhere you like. I'm sure I can afford it. If you would be willing to become my, ah…"

"Mistress."

"… That. And not expect too much of me while I'm busy at the Castle, then it's yours. Yours, and that of any drake you choose to share it with. After all, you are an anti-will o' the wisp, so I'm not expecting total loyalty to me alone. Yours to keep or share as you so choose."

She didn't like the way he let that hang in the air between them as they kissed. He did not say he would cut her off from all future child support and present-day friendly kindness were she to leave him. He did not say he would revoke his offer if they somehow took things up another step and their emotional rather than their physical intimacy deepened. The mystery was there, haunting her like a limp ghost decoration hung from a tree in the front yard on Halloween.

They broke apart again, this time more abruptly. "Hey," she said, wiping her lips on the back of her wrist. "Let's get something straight. I have a rule. Let's say I do agree to be your friend with benefits, or your mistress, or whatever you call it. If you're not in love with me, I don't want you using my private name. We're over 150,000. Call me Anti-Marigold. Even when we're alone."

"I love you." He sounded unsure. "I just love you in a way that's… different. I love you in… some way I can't find good research about. I don't know what this type of affection is called, but it's real to me."

She shook her head, maybe in mocking, and maybe in admiration. Maybe mock admiration. Why? Dunno. "Look, we both want the same thing. We like our friendship. Let's never forget that. You're my best friend, Nebs."

"With benefits?"

"Everything about you is a benefit."

Foop smirked. His claws caught in the back of her snowy hair. "You're reaching."

"Am not," she argued as her hands dropped down to his waist.

"Mm…" His eyes followed her movement. He tightened his wings against a sweeping gust of wind. "I'm glad you danced with me today."

At that, Anti-Marigold almost snorted in his face. "You owe me. Y'all know I-"

"-hate dancing. Yes, I recall." His eyes trailed along her cheek, moving lower towards her neck in a way that quickened her blood. "I'm truly apologetic, Kelsia, but you do it so nicely."

He placed a hinting kiss on her jaw. She chuckled and eased his head away by pushing at his shoulders. As his wings slipped down her back, she started to stand. "Okay, okay, I get it, mate. Y'all like me. Easy there. I like y'all too, but I want to stop. I'm tired, it's cold, and I wanna get to bed." He stuck out the pouting lip, and she raised her eyebrows. "Consider it a promise that ya'll'll get a next time."

Foop rose to meet her, catching her by the wrists and tightening his fingers. "Wait."

For what?

He drew in a breath of the cold Delkian air around them. "We've, um, shared deep kisses for centuries. Don't think I don't love it, but… This was a big, long talk we just had, Kel- Anti-Marigold. Maybe it should end with a special kind of kiss?"

His eyes went to her neck, then back to her face again. Anti-Marigold could still feel the mark where Hiccup had bitten her in the bathroom, suddenly sharp and stinging now.

"What exactly are y'all saying?"

Foop coughed in the back of his throat. "Kel- Anti-Marigold, I mean. You saw my karmic weave today when you and Hiccup were untying your destiny threads. You let Hiccup nip your karmic pouch, but I didn't get to enjoy it. Surely that's not the note you want to end on?"

Anti-Marigold puffed out her cheeks. She turned her head away. "You don't want to see my weave… It's just a bunch of magical glowy strings. It's not that interesting."

"Just one little nip," he murmured, bringing his mouth towards her neck. She turned quickly to catch his lips in hers, which made his eyes fly wide open in pleasant surprise. His two jutting fangs pressed carefully into the corners of her mouth.

"You're a hormonal little leopard," Anti-Marigold told him when they came apart again.

"For scientific curiosity," he insisted, tipping up his chin. "I haven't seen your weave before. Here we are, alone and confessing our deepest forms of raw passion through our words. I'm not aroused enough to make my fangs retract. If you don't want me to nip your neck, you'll have to try harder to get them to fold back."

"Nebula!" The snort escaped her this time. She pushed him back with a hand on her chest and leaned over to sputter and smirk at the snow where they'd been sitting for so long. Her butt was totally frozen, and that was when she'd been sitting on his lap. Yikes.

Foop took her hand by the wrist and moved it off his chest, though he didn't let go. "Now, now. That's a double standard, you tossing my private name about that way. We're over 150,000, and that intimacy is a privilege which has to be earned. We agreed. Come now, Anti-Marigold. You took my boots and my hoodie. Those things come with a price."

"Can't we just count listening to you blather on?"

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and took a step closer. She didn't step back. "Surely there's some part of my blather you'd care to hear. How shalt I serenade your ears? I can delight you with recountings of my victories over my peers in the academic realms, my careful studies of Fairykind biology, the times I very nearly had stupid Poof wriggling like a pathetic worm on the ends of my claws."

"Nah."

"Such a response was expected," he sighed, flicking the end of his scarf over his shoulder. He shivered, bringing his wings forward. "What, then?"

"I dunno…" Anti-Marigold pressed her hand against the left side of her neck. "I mean, I've never let anyone see my weave before 'til now, and then to show it to two boys in one day…"

"Hiccup was an accident. It was like a stage nip; it doesn't count. He won't mind." Foop extended his right hand, and gave a twitch of his claws. "Isn't this the perfect location to get your first real nip?"

Anti-Marigold let her eyes drift behind him. Packed ice and powder glittered like crystal all around them. They were away together on a vacation to an exotic planet. It was almost Christmas. No news reporters would catch she and her prince up here. He was barefoot, she wore his boots and sweatshirt, and they were alone in the beautiful snowy woods. What better night would there be? She'd always intended to get her first nip from someone she loved.

She'd just always imagined it would be from someone who loved her back the same way.

"Foop," she told him, shocking herself with how calm her voice sounded between the quiet pats of falling snow. "If I don't enjoy this, the whole mistress deal is off."

At that, Foop only smirked. "That won't be a problem, darling. Let me show you how the real master of these fangs does his job."

He clutched her back below her wing joints and dipped her down. His effervescence traced along her neck, sharply visible in the cold. Instead of animals, Foop turned his exhaled traces of magic into plants. Wispy vines curled. Leaves unfolded. Blossoms stretched misty petals towards the sky before they faded away.

His fangs hovered over the karmic pouch just below her jugular vein. He paused. "Um. You _do_ want this, don't you, Anti-Marigold?"

"Yeah… I mean, you do, right?"

He shifted his eyes up to meet hers. "You know I'm all talk when I get flirtatious. I was only teasing when I didn't want you to draw away. We can stop."

Anti-Marigold blinked. "But I thought you wanted me?"

His eyes widened. "I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I just meant-"

"Just get it over with." Anti-Marigold fought the urge to cover her face, especially her mouth. "Hey, I'm _sorry_ I can't nip y'all back. I'm sorry I've got flat teeth. I'm sorry we can't have that kind of intimacy and we've gotta use a knife and stuff. I'm sorry I'm _weird_ and clingy and not what you're looking for-"

Foop cut her off by wrapping his arms and wings around her again. He straightened them both up and placed his chin just behind her shoulder. "Let's maybe stop for today. We kissed a lot."

"I'm sorry you don't want me!"

He tightened his wings. "Stop. I didn't mean to push you if you didn't want this. I'm not- I'm not like Hiccup."

She stood there, her arms dangling by her sides and her head tilted back. Maybe if her tears didn't drip on his shoulder, he wouldn't know she was crying.

"Anti-Marigold? Hiccup's… coming out. Let's go inside. If I can just make it to my papers-"

"Wait." It was her turn to say it this time. As expected, Foop trailed off, and turned to look at her with arched eyebrows. Anti-Marigold reached up and managed to massage the back of her neck despite his embrace. She sighed. "Foop, I can't nip ya, mate. But what if we, y'know, maybe kiff-tied for real instead?"

Abruptly, Foop dropped his wings and pulled away. The fur on his cheeks, pink from the cold, started to turn purple. "Y-you can't be serious. It's like -13° out here. Untangling our weaves when we're done could take an hour in itself. You… you promised Hiccup he could be first."

"I just- I thought- If I really meant so much to y'all…"

"Please." He looked away, flattening his ears. "Don't. Anti-Marigold, kiff-tying? That's- that's _completely_ inappropriate for our relationship."

She brought her hand to her forehead. "I don't understand. Y'all just like my body. But y'all never want to get close with my mind."

"Stop." Foop lifted his hands, now covering his ears. His wings fluttered. "Anti-Marigold, it's not like that. I thought we were past this. I like you, but I don't like you like that. Kiff-tying is so- intimate. I _can't_."

Anti-Marigold squared her shoulders, wings twitching. "Y'know, I totally paired with ya when y'all wanted to."

"Stop it." He rounded on her, still pressing his ears flat. "You're not being fair."

"Me meeting your physical needs while y'all don't meet my emotional needs isn't fair!"

"But-" He clenched his curls. "You can't use that against me like this. You're being childish."

"I am not!"

Foop took a step closer. She didn't step back. His heaving had started to pick up, his effervescence curling from his nostrils and between his fangs, turning into white coils of thorns before they faded into nothingness. The silent way he kept squeezing his eyelids shut and blinking suggested a serious mental battle with Hiccup on the other side.

She was going to have to be the one to back down. Wasn't she? To swallow her pride, to bow her head, to bite her lip, to let it be her prince's choice what they did, what she was to him…

But it felt _so good_ to be the one to hurt him for a moment, instead of the other way around.

Foop stared at her a few seconds longer, then dropped his gaze to his bare toes. He curled them in the snow. "A-Anti-Marigold, if we kiff-tied… would you be happy then?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Oh gods, yes. Anti-Poof…" She pushed her wrist across her eyes. "It won't hurt so much, seeing y'all with your High Countess, knowing that you're talking to her, living with her… if I still get to be your first real, on purpose kiff-tie. I was the first one y'all ever kissed, the first one y'all sang with, you were gonna let me be the first one y'all nipped in an intimate sort of way, I think. Can't I be your first for this?"

"I can't." He tightened his arms around his torso. "Hiccup's coming out. Anti-Marigold, it's pointless. He comes out when I'm, well, getting upset like this. I can't stay out the whole time. It will never happen… Hey." Foop blinked hard. When he opened his eyes again, they were glittering with wetness, liquid amethysts, violet like the sunrise, purple like the handle of her hairbrush. "Anti-Marigold, you promised I could be first. Are you lying to me? You said I… he…" He blinked again. "Didn't you promise Hiccup could be your first?"

Anti-Marigold sighed. "Y'know, let's forget about kiff-tying today. We are a li'l young for it anyway. I mean, I've never even taken a class on how to do it right."

She looked up at him, waiting for Foop to slide smoothly in with a cocky, "Oh, but I went to school, and I'm a genius- I can teach you everything you need to know. It's easy, why don't we mind-meld what we both know, we'll figure it out as we go along… Something along the same lines of what he'd told her when she was anxious on the couch, watching the fingers on his right hand balance on her bare hip while his left cradled the back of her head.

Instead, Foop stared at the ground with his eyelids shut, his arms still wrapped around himself. He nodded feebly.

"Nebula," she murmured. She placed her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, come on. I said we're not doing that tying stuff anymore. It's okay if y'all want to wait a little longer. I'm not mad."

"I mean…" He raised his gaze. "Ideally, I'd prefer to wait forever."

Anti-Marigold paused to brush her fingers through her hair before she tried to fish his reasoning out of him. "For kiff-tying with me? Or kiff-tying with…" He looked at her, but didn't stop her, so she finished, "with anyone?"

Foop dropped his arms and leaned back on his heels. Then his arms went up again to fold behind his head. "If by that you mean, would I prefer to live my life without kiff-tying at all, then yes."

His confidence was forced. She could tell by the twitching of his wings, the avoidant gaze. Anti-Marigold rubbed her nose. "Uh. Wow. Okay, but… What about when you become High Count? What about Winni? Breath spirit ringing any bells? You _know_ you're gonna have to when you're in charge and it's his year on the zodiac."

"I hardly think that will be a problem. First, Winni will have to struggle additionally hard to even manifest a form that my stubborn brain can see. I mean, I'm Daoist… not Zodii."

Her stomach pinched into a funnel and swirled away into her gut. Anti-Marigold took a step back. Her feet froze inside his fur-lined boots. "Not Zodii? You're D- D- How long have y'all been Daoist? Uh… Do your parents know about this?"

Foop reached his arm behind her neck and idly began to pluck his claws at her hair. "It's never been much of a secret. I've been an oddball since the days of my wonderfully tortured youth. Poof and I sat down and talked it out once when we were discussing our middle name. You won't go telling my parents, will you, darling?"

"But…" Anti-Marigold stared at the links in his knitted scarf, biting down on her lip. "I mean, you're our prince. You're gonna be our High Count, and without having the favor of the nature spirits… Foop, Winni is the healer! Under your rule, we were s'posed to be granted a time of total peace."

"That's all just Zodii talk and superstition," he insisted. He rubbed his nose. "We ought to move away from being such superstitious people and turn to hard, solid fact."

"Foop, we are _literally_ Anti-Fairies. Luck and superstition, it's part of us. No, but- It's something we all believe, and it's s'posed to be true, and we've been looking forward to it. I…" Anti-Marigold lifted her gaze. " _I've_ been looking forward to it. I thought, y'know… Maybe this was it." She shrugged snowflakes from her wings. "Y'all were gonna be the High Count who won us rights and made it so we live in peace with the Fairies treating us like we're equals, or close to it. But if you're mocking Winni by ruling without him, y'all could literally start another war about our rights, instead of winning them over peaceably by, y'know, talking. Good communication."

Foop's fingers moved to the blue and pink drawstrings of her sweatshirt. He yanked her forward, his eyes sparkling above hers. "Then you see why all this needs to be our little secret. I _can_ trust you, can't I, Anti-Marigold? With all those things I said about me being Daoist, not wanting to kiff-tie, and our private relationship as friends with benefits? I had hoped that I could trust you with that part of me. 'Peaceable' isn't really my style anyway."

It was almost too threatening of a line to kiss her on, but Anti-Marigold let him anyway. He leaned into her; she rocked just a hint back on her heels. He leaned forward again, this time clamping his long toes around the tip of her boot. Anti-Marigold waited to feel his teeth click against hers. For once, they didn't come. He took her upper lip between his without any trace of fangs getting in the way. His arms slid behind her head, his left hand clutching her pigtails together and his right sliding up near her crown.

Her wings prickled. She flapped once for balance. Foop pushed his mouth even closer to hers, until they were both open, effervescence mingling in a blur of peppermint and pineapple flavoring. Not to mention the ever-present Anti-Fairy blend of strawberry and brass. At first, Anti-Marigold didn't know what to do with her hands. With her left, she gripped an overhead offshoot of the evergreen branches, stinging needles digging into the creases of her palm. Foop's bony knees bumped into hers. She rose on the ends of her boots, unfurling her wings as he stretched towards her with his. Wind buffeted between them, shaking them back, but not for long. Several of his toes caught the hem of her pants, aimlessly gripping and releasing the fabric as though searching for a hold he could roost from.

She let go of the branch with her hand. It whipped into the air, scattering pretty flakes and glittering chunks of ice. It was funny, how their mouths had gotten even colder now that they were locked together, effervescence spinning in a whirl too fast to notice the shapes their expelled magic took on. Without breaking apart, Foop started to tilt his head the opposite way. Their noses bumped in the process. Anti-Marigold murmured something unintelligible even to her and adjusted her head to mirror his movement.

As their kiss drew out longer, she brought both hands to his waist. They lingered, briefly, then slid further down until she found his back pockets. She wriggled her fingers in. In response, Foop tightened his grip on her pigtails. His claws raked at the bands that held them tied. Why hadn't he just told her he'd have liked to see her hair down earlier? Dunno. Literally, her hands had been free _any time_ before now. But instead, he felt blindly at her pigtails, his lips loosening, his soft tongue apprehensive against the roof of her mouth.

"Pfft." Anti-Marigold couldn't help herself. She opened her eyes, shaking both from cold and from suppressed snickers. Foop pulled away, tightening his eyebrows together in the middle.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Sorry, mate. It's just…" She pushed the underside of her wrist up her cheek. "Y'all've never used your tongue before, and I forgot that y'all's is so much thicker than mine. It tickles and I got distracted."

"Mock me, will you?" Foop grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her into the air; her hands slipped from his pockets. "Have you ever tried kissing a girl whose tongue ends in a spiral like a moth proboscis?"

"Hey," she protested as he carried her even closer to the tree trunk. "Okay, first of all, I can officially confirm my theory that y'all have an anti-wisp for a gran, and your tongue is even longer than mine, so. Second, you _liiike_ it."

"Oh, I don't know if I'd go as far as saying that." Foop plopped her down with her back right up against the conifer, her wings spread to either side. In the process, their crowns bumped against a needled bough, dumping snow on both their heads. Wetness trickled down her hair. He braced his hand against the tree beside her ear and twitched his mouth into the usual smirk. "Now, come on. You know I can't check to see if your fangs have retracted. Give me some sort of sign that you're enjoying this."

Anti-Marigold stuck up her chin. "I am enjoying this."

"Ah, but I'm a man of science, and I prefer to work with physiological measures and clearly observable data." His eyes wandered to her mouth again. "How long do you think it will be before I can make you squeak?"

"Hey, stop it, mate. You know anti-wisps don't make y'all's squeaks."

He tossed her his usual quip: "That's what they said before I tried, you mean."

"Nebula!" she shrieked as he pressed a fast kiss into the left side of her neck and let it stay. So _now_ what was she supposed to do with her hands? Anti-Marigold bit her lip and pressed them behind her, tracing them across the rough bark of the conifer. Foop's fingers returned to her pigtails. His roaming kisses brought him down from her ear to a particular patch of thin fur just below her jugular. Probably, it was still dark purple from Hiccup's work on it in the bathroom. There Foop paused, hovering, with his mouth slightly open.

"I'm ready for it now," Anti-Marigold whispered when he continued to stay frozen and silent.

"I don't know how to do this," he said blankly. "I think I should have studied the literature more. I was under the impression that I was supposed to nip you now, but my fangs retracted when I became… when we were kissing."

She craned her neck as best she could. "Just your top set though, right? Can y'all still slice it with your bottom ones?"

Foop frowned, but positioned his mouth more carefully, taking her skin in the teeth that hadn't folded back. Anti-Marigold leaned her head back against the tree and did not refuse him.

But he didn't make the sharp tear. Instead, Foop went completely stiff. He pulled away. Anti-Marigold cracked open one eye to see him staring past her shoulder, his pupils shrunk and his ears quivering. Huh?

His wings snapped open. He shoved himself away from her; her fingers clenched against the tree bark. She started to say Hiccup's name, until she saw Foop tighten his fists. His red scarf whipped dramatically behind him in a gust of wind with perfect timing.

"Poof! How long have you been invading our privacy?"

Smoof.

Anti-Marigold turned slowly on her heel, pretending to be very interested in a fraying white tassel at the end of her own scarf. She risked a glance up to find Poof standing in the shadow of another enormous evergreen, arms folded, a gap-toothed grin etched across his pudgy face. He no longer sucked on a candy cane, though several clouds of effervescence still billowed from his mouth, nose, and hand, each puff forming into a bird, fish, or other graceful woodland creature before they darted off. He shrugged with his shoulders and wings together.

"Eh. Can't remember. Just thinking you two are disgustingly cute. It's the most wonderful time of year. Migration season."

 _"No! Get out!"_

Poof ducked his counterpart's lousy powdered snowball with a chuckle. He bent down, tongue between his lips, and packed together one of his own. "Not on my watch, mate," Anti-Marigold growled, scooping up a chunk of ice. She reared her arm to throw, but Foop beat her to the punch by simply barreling into his counterpart with a feral howl. Both of them plowed into the snow, tumbled down a short rise, and proceeded to tussle- skinny intellectual on broad-shouldered athlete. Several fluffy white Delkian fauna took sudden flight with caws and squawks deeper into the trees. Normally, Poof would have been winning easily, but he was laughing so hard and trying to block his face, shouting protests as Foop dumped snow down his collar, that he simply wasn't in the right frame of mind.

Anti-Marigold shook her head. "I'll leave y'all ta fight for my honor while I head back and warm up, then. Come inside soon, mates. Seriously, it's heaps cold out here, even for Unseelie."

Foop brought both his hands down on the back of Poof's neck and slammed him face-first into a puffy snowdrift. "I sort of love you, Anti-Marigold," he whisper-called when she waved good-bye.

"I sort of love y'all too, Anti-Poof." Anti-Marigold was smiling when she turned around, but frowning when she lit her wings and flew off through the gently falling snow. She wrapped her hands in Hiccup's hoodie and shivered all over. She didn't mind the kissing. She really enjoyed the kissing. But it was a shame, wasn't it, to be in love with someone who constantly desired to get even more physical than that?

The exchange of benefits for something that she didn't… _really_ mind offering up. To him, anyway. She didn't have a lot of friends, but she did have Foop. There was no one else she could imagine giving that part of herself away to.

She'd _enjoyed_ that lazy Thursday afternoon she'd spent with Foop, mostly hidden beneath the heavy blankets as they binge-watched "Sorcery Hall" alone for hours. That had quelled most of the awkwardness and first-time jitters; luckily, it had just been a rerun, so she hadn't missed any of the important story. She and Foop had agreed once they were finished that the whole experience of intimacy had been "sort of 'meh'", but they'd acknowledged that they were simply young and inexperienced, that over the millennia they would master the craft, that they could only go up from here, that their inevitable first honey-lock wouldn't be so weird.

Mostly, the whole entertaining the Anti-Fairy prince gig with little promise of his emotional support sounded like a chore, but it was one she was willing to shoulder. After all, they were friends. With benefits? Perhaps. But that ending didn't change the first word. Foop seemed to care about her. She definitely cared about him. They were young, and they were figuring themselves out. Everything would come together someday.

"What makes you tick, Kelsia?" she murmured to herself. Beating her wings faster, she zipped out of the trees and headed towards the cabin.

Well then. If this was how she was going to make her living, then she'd just treat this experience like a job. The hours were flexible and she would conduct herself in a professional manner. She'd get her pretty home, and finally have just the roof she wanted over her head. Foop would get his intimacy needs met. He'd give attention to her, she'd give affection to him. It seemed like a fair trade.

… Right?

* * *

 **A/N** \- As I'm sure most of us know, Smile Dip is a nod to the Smile Dip that appeared in "Gravity Falls", which in itself is a parody of Fun Dip.

Fun fact: Did you know the pheromones that make female moths amorous smell like pineapple, because I just found that out and _lost it_.


	42. (67) Mature

_Summary:_ Young H.P. is tasked with raising imprinted ducklings in preparation for being Head Pixie.

 _Characters:_ H.P., Ambrosine, assorted fairies, Sanderson

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Hate That I Love You" / ?

 _Prerequisites:_ "Grooming", "Minion"

 _A/N:_ There's no explicit/mature content in this Prompt. This is just an H.P.-centric piece about growing up a gyne in Fairy society. Maturity has never been one of H.P.'s strengths and no one is surprised.

* * *

 **67\. Mature**

 _Spring of the Floating Feathers - Spring of the Charged Waters_

* * *

"What happens if we kick all the sand off the beach?" Marina asked, pushing a small heap of glittery white sand - at least, the three Fairy children were pretty sure it was called sand - over the edge of the cloudcliff. Fergus leaned forward on his hands and knees to watch the flakes spin through the air, drifting down towards Planet Earth. His fingers clenched the edge of the clouds. Even at the cliff, the puffy stuff was sturdy enough that he could do that, right?

Yeesh. They were really high up. Even peeking over for just a few seconds made him feel he'd lost his sense of balance. Fergus snapped his wings out, then in again. Shrinking back, he tucked his chin between his hands. "I dunno," he said. "The beach has been on this side of Novakiin since forever. Maybe the sand comes back when it's gone."

To tell the truth, "beach" might have been a bit of an overstatement for their location. The stretch of cloudy grit was only about ten wingspans long, and only six wingspans wide. Realistically, "sandpit" described the place just as well, if not better than, the more luxurious term. There just wasn't a lot of sand (cloudsand?) to be had in this part of the cloudlands. _Technically_ , since the strip of sand was so thin, they _probably_ shouldn't be playing here without adult supervision during the dark season when the stars didn't glow so bright, but Fergus had finally decided it was okay. After all, that was his own house on the corner of the street over there, and his dad was just inside warming up water for a bath. If he fell off the beach, then Marina or Sunglow could run and get his dad to rescue him. Although, they wouldn't need help if they went over the edge. They could fly for real. They didn't only float above solid stuff like he did.

"Maybe sand grows like grass," Sunglow said thoughtfully, tapping his chin.

Fergus sat back on his heels. "Your grandma's ear hair grows like grass."

Sunglow stuck out his tongue. "The mold in your dad's house grows like grass."

"At least he doesn't smell like grass. You smell like grass."

"And you smell like sour fruit."

"You smell like sour vegetables."

Marina broke them apart by digging a shiny purple stone out of the sand and holding it up for them both to see. "Look at this pretty rock I found."

"Ooh. Now that's spiffy-spat." Sunglow made a spiral in the air with his finger. "It has swirlies on it."

"I know! And it's shaped like a horse head."

Fergus squinted. "It's a rock."

Marina sighed in exasperation and shook out her hair. "You have to pretend and look close."

He pointed to the wand in the sheath at her hip. "You could use magic to _poof_ up a real horse head whenever you want."

"That's not fun, though." Marina let the rock drop back in the sand. "What about you, Sunglow? What are you digging?"

Sunglow held out his hand to reveal another stone in his upturned palm. "This one looks like a cú sith."

"Oh, it does!"

"I don't know." Fergus leaned in to inspect it. "It looks even more like a plain rock than Marina's did."

She puffed her cheeks, then let the air whisper out again. "Well, you find one, then."

Fergus walked in a grid pattern along the little beach, then finally bent down to pick up a gray rock. It looked like it had chipped off from one of the short stone walls that cradled their tiny beach. It was smooth and square, with really straight edges. "I like this one."

He showed it to Marina, who frowned. "What's that supposed to be?"

"That's the joke." Fergus slipped the rock in the chest pocket of his vest and gave it a pat. "It doesn't look like anything. It's just a rock. Haha."

Sunglow tipped his head. "You can't keep that one. It's not interesting."

"And it's not even pretty."

"Maybe not. But that's fine. It makes me laugh."

"That's not a good reason to keep it," Marina insisted. "Rocks should remind you of stuff. They have to look like stuff. They should look like animals, or a face."

He knelt down and started to draw a flower in the sand. "It looks like _my_ face. It even had my freckles."

"Your face doesn't count. Most faces aren't square like yours."

Right around then, at the bend in the street just across from the beach, a door of a grit-colored house slammed shut. A fairy stepped out onto his porch and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Fergusius!"

Fergus looked over his shoulder, then back at Sunglow and Marina. "That's my dad. I have to go."

"Pretend you didn't hear him so you can play a little longer," Sunglow suggested, digging a hole.

Fergus rolled his eyes. "You forget my family's motto: _Páistí refracta foirfe daoine_."

Marina wrinkled her nose. "Is that Milesian? It sounds like the Eros family motto."

"'Sons are perfect,'" he translated in deadpan monotone. He stood up again, dusting chunks of cloudy sand from his pants. "I gotta go. It's too dark to be outside this early in spring anyway."

Sunglow bobbed his head. "We'll play more next weekend when I come down from Faeheim."

"No we can't. You remember how I have freckles? Well. I turned 5,000 this winter. Now I'm on the Easter Bunny's list, and he's bringing me a basket of duck eggs tonight. I have to stay close by so they'll think I'm their mom when they hatch."

"Fergusius Whimsifinado!" Ambrosine called again. Fergus inched away from his friends and cleared his throat.

"I really have to go now. I'll see you sometime after my ducks hatch. Until then, you guys can push the sand over the edge without me."

"'Bye, duck dad," Marina said, waving her hand.

"Shut your face in real life," Fergus muttered back. Heaving himself out of the sandpit and back onto the fluffy cloud road, he hurried across the street and pushed open the front gate all by himself. Ambrosine was standing on the steps in a mulberry-colored vest, holding the front curtain to the side with one hand. He greeted his son with a nod.

"Hop in the tub, speck. I warmed the water up for you. The Easter Bunny is already on his way over as we flick our wings, and we don't want it to look like I just fished you out of a hole in the ground."

Fergus sighed and undid the first button on his vest, which was deep purple instead of red like his father's. "Dad, I told you not to call me by my long name in front of my friends. I just want you to call me my regular name."

"That's right. You did. I'll stop." Ambrosine gave him a pat on the shoulder. When Fergus stepped inside the house, he let the curtain fall shut behind them. "How much do you know about what's happening tonight?"

Fergus shrugged. "The Easter Bunny is bringing me eggs. Since it's my first time, he's meeting me specially tonight and dropping them off now instead of tomorrow."

Ambrosine nodded. "It's about time I gave you the talk about the nests and the honeycomb. Into the bath with you."

Fergus was 5,000 now, and he didn't need anyone to watch him while he had his bath. Ambrosine insisted on it anyway most of the time, because he liked to be there when his son got out. He probably didn't trust him to dab the fake pheromones on his face by himself. Fergus couldn't wait for the day when he grew up and his pheromones were strong enough that Ambrosine gave up trying to suppress them. One day.

"Can't I at least wash my own hair?" he muttered, slouching against the side of the tub as Ambrosine soaped up his hands.

"No. Washing hair is Daddy's job. Now. We're going to talk about why the lifestyles of ducklings and bees are important to us. Fairies are either born as kabouters, gynes, or drones. I'm a kabouter. Most of your ancestors are kabouters. Damsels are always kabouters. But you're a gyne."

"Because I have freckles."

"Because you have freckles." Ambrosine pushed his fingers through his son's dark hair, scrubbing it all over until everything was foamy white and stinging soap dripped just in front of Fergus' eyes. "And what do gynes do?"

"Own big houses. Have lots of kids. Any Fairy can be born as a gyne no matter what subspecies they are, and some gynes even marry more than one damsel and have even more kids. But we who are common fairies don't do that because we believe polygamy and serial monogamy are wrong. That's why we're the highest subspecies on the social ladder. _Faedivus fae_ only choose one mate in our whole lives."

"That's right. And what are you going to do when you become an adult gyne?"

"You're giving me and my wife this house, and I'll take care of you and have nymphs. I'm going to be in charge of Wish Fixers, and I'll give it to my firstborn too."

"Perfect." Briefly, Ambrosine paused from his washing to kiss his son's forehead. "I remember I was so afraid to tell my father when I was pregnant with you. I pushed through all the symptoms by myself, and hid my stomach under baggy shirts when I had to see him over a few weekends. I did it by myself, and it was the scariest thing I ever had to do. Even more than fighting in the war. When it's your turn to have nymphs, I want you living with me so I can be there to help you."

"Yeah."

After rinsing his hands of soap in the low water of the tub, Ambrosine touched the back of Fergus' neck with two fingertips. "Next. All Fairies produce pheromones. Even damsels. But adult gynes produce the most powerful ones of all, from this area right here. Drones are certain Fairies who respond strongly to gyne pheromones. Gyne pheromones help them find their way when they're lost. Pheromones calm them down when they're scared. Sort of in the same way sucking on your thumb or chewing on wood appears to be soothing for you."

Fergus didn't take his chin or his folded arms from the edge of the tub. He slipped his thumb into his mouth. "What's the point of drones?"

"Well." Ambrosine tilted his head towards the ceiling. "Do you remember when we visited Orin Winkleglint's estate and cooked all that food over the fire outside? What happens to you when you're exposed to a great deal of smoke?"

"I get tired and fall asleep."

"Exactly. You have special instincts and traits that affect you in certain ways. Drones and kabouters don't. If a fire started in your home one day and you fell asleep in your bed, you would want to have drones around to take care of you and make sure you're safe."

Fergus eased his thumb from his mouth again. "So they're like servants."

"Friends," Ambrosine corrected, reaching for a bar of soap. "You're a gyne. You produce thrice the pheromones any mere kabouter does. And one day you'll have drones who are attracted to those pheromones. Some drones will want to follow you around all the time, and take care of you by offering you food or making sure your clothes are on straight and not wrinkled. They're called a retinue."

"What do they want from me? I don't want them to bother me all the time."

"They might not want anything. They might just like the way you smell."

"Why do they follow me if they don't need anything?"

"That's just what they do."

"What about when I don't want them to follow me?"

"Why don't you want drones to follow you? They want to help you. They're just trying to be nice."

"It's weird to have people following me all day. I don't want them to watch me when I do math problems, or when I read books, or when I'm at school, or when I sleep." _I don't want them to hover over me the way you do._ "Can't they just fix my clothes and leave?"

"You want the drones to leave? Even if that makes them sad?"

"Why is it sad?"

"Because you don't want to be with them. You might make them feel like you don't want to be their friend."

"I assume that if I ask them to leave then it's because they were in my way," Fergus muttered.

Ambrosine shrugged. "Drones are usually very nervous creatures. Being around gynes makes them feel safe. You don't want them to feel lonely and scared, do you, speck?"

"I guess not. But I still don't know for sure if I want a retinue."

"You'll change your mind when you're older. Now lift your arm for me." Fergus did, and Ambrosine rubbed the bar of soap around. "Have you memorized those patterns I gave you to study when you were 4,500?"

Fergus blinked. "The what?"

"The preening signal chart. Did you ever memorize those symbols?"

"Oh. Those." Fergus looked down at his hands. "Yeah, I meant to get around to that. I just didn't have time for it during the last 500 years. It's been pretty hectic around here."

"Well, you should memorize them. It's easiest to learn them when you're young, and you'll need them later."

"For what?"

"When you need to have special time with your drones one day."

"Huh?"

"Don't say 'Huh.'" Ambrosine picked up a small pitcher and scooped it half-full of tub water. "Look up high. Fergus, we Fairies don't communicate with each other using only our words. We also use body language, hand signs, and writing to talk to each other. And we use one other thing too. What is it?"

"Pheromones."

"Do you know how pheromones work?"

"Yeah, but you should tell me your version of how they work so I can hear your perspective."

"Mmhm." Ambrosine refilled the pitcher. "Different pheromones are transferred between two people in different ways in different contexts. You can taste someone's pheromones in the air just by being near them. Or, you might be able to detect it on an item they handled and left their sweat and dust on. Then there's preening. Have you heard of preening?"

"No," Fergus lied.

"That surprises me. Knowing your friends, I expected it to be one of those topics you three exchanged guesses and rumors about. Hmm. Look up high again. Almost done. A gyne and his drones become very close when they live together. It's the duty of a gyne to care for his drones when they're sick, and to ensure they have food and a safe place to sleep before he even thinks about himself."

"That's dumb."

"No it isn't."

Fergus frowned. "It is, though. Why should the drones get all the good stuff? What do I get in return for taking care of them all day every single day?"

"You get to be their friend, silly. And, they'll protect you forever. Drones show their loyalty by promising to fight for their gyne, and help him around their home."

"No they don't."

"Excuse me?"

He sat up. "Sunglow's friend's dad is a gyne, and he told Sunglow's friend and Sunglow says drones aren't allowed to get involved when gynes fight each other. Gynes always fight each other. So drones can't help, and that's dumb if they're telling people they will when they won't. That's lying."

"But drones can fight for and help their gyne in other ways."

"How?"

"You'll understand when you're older." Ambrosine picked at the sand in Fergus' hair. "What you should know now is that a gyne and his drones trust each other very much. They function as a team, and if they weren't all working to help each other, then no one would be happy. Everyone can be happy when they act as a team. Preening is the exchange of pheromones between a gyne and a drone who are very close like that."

"Like how me and my friends are close?"

"Exactly. Gynes and drones don't just stand around tasting scent cues in the air. They _share_ them, as if they were part of each other. They make a behavioral contract that seals their commitment to one another. Do you know how?"

"Actually… no."

Ambrosine met his eyes. "The drone absorbs pheromones from a gyne's skin by licking his neck, and the gyne presents them to the drone by licking his face."

It took several seconds for that to sink in. Then, "Oh. That's gross. Why would I want to lick someone's skin? I don't even like licking my own skin. That's really gross. Really."

"You'll change your mind when you start taking an interest in drones. It happens to every gyne when they become adults."

"Then why are you telling me this now?" Fergus upturned his hands. "I'm not even going to be an adult for more than one hundred thousand years. Now you've ruined everything in my life! That was gross!"

"Look up high. Last one. I believe you should learn the things that adult gynes and drones do together this early, so you know what to expect when you grow up. I want you to know that if you hear people talking about preening, you shouldn't be embarrassed or scared. Preening is a special, intimate ritual that's natural and normal. All gynes and drones do it."

"But it sounds like it would be disgusting. It's sweaty and weird and I don't like it."

"You didn't seem to mind the wands and wings talk this much," Ambrosine said, setting his pitcher aside.

Fergus shrugged without looking up. "I liked it because it was the story about how you got pregnant with me. You used to not know I was going to exist, and you had a life before I was born, and your own friends and stuff. It's interesting. You talked about what Mom was like. I liked that."

Ambrosine closed his eyes. "Yes. I liked that too. Why don't you memorize the preening signals anyway? Just in case. Are you done washing?"

"I'm done." Fergus climbed from the tub and reached for his wand on the counter. Ambrosine moved it away.

"What's the rule?"

Fergus pouted. "I know I'm not supposed to dry off or put my clothes on with magic, but this is a rush. Can't I? Just once?"

"The Whimsifinado fortune wasn't built on frivolous waste."

"You warmed up the bath!"

"Did you want a cold bath?"

Grumbling, Fergus pulled his clothes on one item at a time. Even the vest. Even the belt. Ambrosine took a small cylindrical container from his pocket and crouched down in front of him.

"Slack jaw, Fergus. Eyes closed. Don't move."

"Daaad… Can't I wear my _own_ pheromones when I meet the Easter Bunny? Do I really have to put on the fake ones?"

Ambrosine gave him a pointed look. So Fergus did as he asked. His father swirled his finger around in the oily substance inside the container, then painted a few strokes up his cheeks, along his forehead, and down his nose. "There. Perfect. Let's go wait up front to meet our guest."

The Easter Bunny, Fergus observed when he showed up at the front door, was a very easily-distracted person. Was he a person? He looked like a giant pink rabbit with huge buck teeth and a mouth big enough that he could have chomped a 5,000-year-old fairy right up. A thick tuft of fur hung in his eyes, and he wore a black bow tie around his neck. It looked way too small on him. "Pleasure to see you," Ambrosine said, placing a warning hand on Fergus' shoulder.

"You Fergusius Alexander Whimsifinado?" asked the Easter Bunny, skimming his eyes down the scroll trailing from one paw.

"My name's Fergus, and I hate the name Alex. I'm changing my middle name when I grow up. It's gonna be S-"

He broke off when he realized the Easter Bunny wasn't listening. The man(?) had paused to tuck a pink and yellow egg into the leaves of a potted plant on the porch. He looked up. "You a Whimsifinado or not?"

Fergus reached out and picked up the not-very-well-hidden egg. "If you're the Easter Bunny, where's the Wester Bunny?"

"Ha ha. You planning to be a comedian, kid? Think I could hook you up with my buddy April." The Easter Bunny rolled his eyes. "Nutcase really thinks he can make it big."

He didn't have a good response for that. "Yes" and "No" were both poor answers. Ignoring Ambrosine's tightening fingers, Fergus brought the egg to his chest and said, "Well, you're a rabbit. Shouldn't you be eating a carrot or something?"

"Hey hey. Shouldn't you be sticking your head down a well or something? Listen." He held out a wicker basket piled up with white duck eggs, grass, feathers, and wool. "You know Winni and Thurmondo?"

"The nature spirits who represent the Breath and Leaves years on the zodiac, and who Wednesday and Thursday are named after? Yeah. They're locked up in their Zodiac Temples. Why?"

"I'm their baby boy, see?" The Easter Bunny pointed his thumb (He had thumbs) at his chest. "And I don't care what you think you see. I don't really look like this. It's all you crazy marketers who keep getting everyone to interpret me as a _stupid_ fluffy bunny, with a stupid fluffy tail and _stupid fluffy ears_. Did I ask you to act like this is how I am? Do I look funny to you?"

Ambrosine flapped his wings in a way that made a whipping sound in the air to redirect attention back on himself. The Easter Bunny stopped. He sat back on his massive heels, placing his forepaws on the handle of the basket.

"Right. I brought your eggs. They're due to hatch within the week. Any of 'em don't, give me a scry and we'll put them to use at Spellementary for Egg Baby Week. Sign here, please."

Fergus looked at Ambrosine, then put the colored egg in his pocket and reached out his hand. "Thanks, I guess."

There wasn't any further paperwork than signing his name, but there were explanations. Long, boring, detailed ones, and Fergus spent most of the time sitting on the couch, his feet dangling above the floor, resting his chin in his hand while his dad and the Easter Bunny discussed matters about the ducks over his head. He held the basket of eggs in his lap, not super sure what to do with it. Were they warm enough? He didn't have to sit on them until they hatched, did he? Fairies weren't supposed to weigh a lot, but he might weigh too much that he'd crack them.

He was sent to stay in his room with books and homework, away from all his friends. Ambrosine brought him meals and only stayed long enough to get a quick update on the status of the eggs. Fergus passed a lot of time lying on his stomach on his bed, kicking his legs in slow motion, staring at the unmoving basket. He'd put his hands at the bottoms of his cheeks and see how long it took for them to slide all the way up to the tops and pop off. Then he'd drop his head to his messy blankets and scream his little gurgling groans. This was so _boring_.

When the ducklings popped out at last, he almost thought about hiding so he wouldn't be the first thing they saw. The Easter Bunny had said something like how he shouldn't even bounce a ball for the first couple days, or else the ducklings might imprint on that instead. Fergus had to admit he was curious. What else could he make them imprint on? If he lifted only his hand above the edge of the basket and made quacking noises, opening and closing his fingers like a beak, would they think only his hand was their mama?

But Ambrosine wouldn't be happy if he did that. And Fergus, for all his faults, considered himself a good boy. _Páistí refracta foirfe daoine_.

Admittedly, the ducklings were very adorable. It wasn't long before they were crawling over each other in the basket, bumping and falling and pecking at everything. They sprawled on their bellies and cheeped up a storm. Maybe it was dumb to talk to the ducks, but Fergus found himself ranting to them about how frustrated he got with his dad sometimes and how he wished he could remember his mom or _anything_ about the first year of his life anyway. The ducklings were patient. The ducklings understood. He decided not to name them. They all looked alike and came when he called, "Ducks!" so what was the point?

"How long does this go on?" Fergus asked on the fifth day after their hatching, holding one ball of yellow fluff near his cheek. They were in the front room, and he was kneeling at the coffee table. Each duck wanted their turn of being picked up, but they kept climbing over the barrier of twisted blankets he'd set up around the table's edges and jumping down to the floor again. Ambrosine leaned against the wall by the fireplace, his arms folded.

"Every decade until you come into your adult wings, unless at least one of your ducks from the previous batch is still alive. In which case you'll get skipped over until next time."

His fingers tightened around the duck in his hand. "Every decade? Are you serious? Is that necessary?"

Ambrosine bent down to stroke one duckling's soft head with his fingertips. "This simulation is intended to mimic reality in a fun, simple way for young gynes like you. It's common for drones to stick with the same gyne for tens of thousands of years. Even hundreds. Who knows? One day you might even raise a drone who sticks for life. Most of your children will probably be drones instead of gynes."

"Don't remind me. I'm sick just thinking about it." Fergus put the duckling in his lap. Then he moved it back to the coffee table, pulled his knees up to his chin, and crossed his arms. "I don't know if I can do this."

"When you're 50,000, the Easter Bunny will bring you goose eggs too, so you can get a feel for the differences, if that helps."

"No. I don't want to do any of this. How do I get out of the program early? Bribe him? What do nature spirits even want? Worshippers? I am _not_ getting on my knees and praying to the Easter Bunny."

Ambrosine placed his hand on his son's tense shoulder. "The Easter Bunny only wants what's best for you, speck. Someday you're going to attract drones, and you need to have an inkling of what they expect from you, and what you should expect from them."

For a time, Fergus said and did nothing. The ducklings pecked around his feet. Then he lifted his head. "Why did Mother Nature have to make us this way?"

* * *

 _Summer of the Screaming Hornbills_

"Whimster! Whimsy! Whimzo in the building!"

After checking to make sure none of his ducks had hopped inside his locker, Fergus shut it and clenched his fingers around the bridge of his nose. "What a wonderful world." The hand dropped down and slipped into the pocket of his bulky gray coat. Bulky, because it made him look bigger than he was, and most people might assume the coat's padding was the reason why he looked that way. Instead of answering the will o' the wisp's shout, he turned and started up the hall in the opposite direction. His ducks waddled on his heels, rustling their wings in anticipation of a take-off. Which they weren't going to get. Not inside. Tough luck for them.

"Whiiiimzino!" Magalee Dustfinger flew up behind him, her arms laden with bark strips and books. She didn't slow down, but rammed him with her shoulder, then flipped over so she could see his face. "Whimzozozona! Eyyy!"

"Can I help you?" Fergus monotoned, continuing to walk forward. Having ducks at his heels, as he'd had every decade for millennia after millennia, forced him to stay on the ground for their sake. Too many jostling bodies crowded the tall hallways. Sure, the ducks had their annoying moments, but they were still his responsibility. Time and time again, he'd found his personal pride reluctant to stop caring. Everyone who knew he had freckles knew about the ducks. If a whole batch disappeared one day, or even if they vanished one at a time over a period of weeks, gossipping eyes would question why. That, he didn't need.

Magalee floated after him, her blue and black wings twirling like scarves. A will o' the wisp drake wearing all brown, his dull wings and hair the same color, walked after her in much the same way his ducks were following him. His name was Tobie, though no one ever acknowledged him by it any more than they acknowledged why he and Magalee were allowed to share the same dorm room. "Whimsi _fine_ , where's that write-up for potions class you owe me?"

"'Owe you?'" he asked, arching his brows.

"You're late."

"Take it up with my procrastination habits. I had too much to do. I'll get it to you later."

"You're gonna fail this class."

"I'm amazing at this class."

"You're gonna fail your life."

"Pffft. I'll gonna destroy your life. I'll beat you up today."

"I'll fight you with a rock."

"You're bananas, Dustfinger." Fergus waited at the corner, counting duck heads before he turned in the direction of the cafeteria. Leprechauns up ahead. No wings. He crossed to the other side of the hall where the _Duck crossing_ lane was, tonguing his cheek. "You know what? Blitz you. I hate your annoying face."

Magalee stuck out her tongue. "Whims, hey, throw your poor lab partner a bone. You need me. We should study where the cute drakes hang out. What are you doing after class tomorrow?"

"Fighting you outside your dorm."

"And losing. I'd kick your butt if I hadn't injured my kicking foot in Spellementary."

"I could fight you without even using my wan- _Oof!_ " Someone slammed into Fergus' side right as he stepped into the hallway intersection. Reacting fast, Magalee grabbed his arm, saving him from crushing the ducks behind him. "Hey," he spluttered.

The lawn gnome in question glanced back over his shoulder and tapped two fingers against his neck. "Sorry! Overslept!"

Fergus shook out his wings, pushing Magalee's hand away. "Like I was saying, I'll get my half of the project done later. Not tonight, though. I have a thing."

"Courting a fritzy dame?"

"… Something like that." Fergus checked the hallway, then led his ducks through, glaring at anyone who didn't stop far enough back as he passed. "I'm meeting with the teaching assistant for advanced transformation sciences in the library. I've been having problems turning into anything smaller than a rabbit, and I'm hoping she can help."

"It's because you're a fat pumpkin."

"Possibly. Maybe big Fairies can't turn into small animals."

Magalee zipped in front of him, turning on her back and coasting forward while she had the speed and space. "Didn't you and the TA for advanced transformation sciences grow up together or something?"

"Her name's Marina. She's studying Anti-Fairy history and the Zodii myths, even though she's Daoist. We became best friends as kids after my dad pulled me aside and told me he doesn't like her family and I should stay far away from her."

"Is she fritzy, or just cute?"

Fergus tightened his grip on his books. Shifting them in his arms, he lifted one finger and pointed it at her face. "Don't read into it. We're just meeting for a study session."

"Private study room? Alone?"

"Um. That's- not relevant."

"Cuuute! Your freckles disappear when you blush." Careful of the ducks, Magalee landed on the floor beside him and jabbed him so hard with her elbow that he crashed into the neighboring lockers. "Ducky dad's been gootchie-goggling his bestie!"

Fergus elbowed her back. "Hey, plug it. It's not your business if I like her. Marina's, I don't know. Interesting to listen to." He shrugged. "My dad doesn't like her. She's the only damsel I've ever been allowed to chase after because _I_ think she's special, instead of because he thinks he's found someone who's a good match for me. I don't know. We both like parties. I want to see it go somewhere."

"Dare you to kiss her."

"Dare you to stop me. Ducks!" Fergus clicked his tongue. "Don't fall so far back. I don't want you mixing with other ducks. I'd never be able to tell you apart."

Magalee pushed her hair behind her ears. It was brown, and very long, falling somewhere between her waist and the backs of her knees. "Your birds are cute, but have you thought about claiming an actual drone yet?"

He glanced at her sideways. "No…"

"Let me know. I've got some recs if you're interested."

"I don't…" Fergus slid his sideways glance a little farther across the hallway. "… think you're allowed to give me names. _Canterbury v. Oakwing_ , remember? Confidentiality?"

The wisp shook her head. Her hands went behind her back, and she started skipping a little as she stepped. "Come on. You know I have flawless snatter-dar when I get sugarloaded. What about you? Which classmates do you think are drones?"

As luck would have it, they were walking past a washroom at that very moment. It was a strange sort of washroom, like an inset in the wall with the washing basin and garbage can out front for everyone to see, and the stalls hidden around a bend. A very short drake, thin enough to shatter with a gust of wind, walked out of it as they passed by. His hair was blue, dark blue, and all long and shaggy in the back. A few stripes of hair on his chin were just starting to come in. His shirt was gray. He looked familiar…

His name started with a "Ba", though Fergus couldn't remember what it was. He paused for a second, staring at the back of his head and trying to remember it. Barry, Barty, Balthazar… Whatever it was, he was weirdly graceful as he approached the washing basin, even though all he was doing was washing his hands. The _slish, slosh_ of the soap and water sounded sharp and cliché, and his head bounced a little here and there as though following music that existed only inside his head. Honestly, Fergus wouldn't have been surprised if the core in his forehead chamber had manifested into some sort of musical device. He looked like the type to snuggle up to a huge window with a thick quilt over his legs, wrapped in a sweater the color of autumn, sipping from a mug of cider as some of his more jolly peers ran about outside tackling each other and throwing discs. He probably preferred books to rolling in the dirt; he cleaned his hands very well. Fergus hadn't read any books for fun in what felt like centuries, but maybe he could ask for recommendations. Then they'd have something to strike up a conversation about.

Wait a second.

What.

The.

What.

"Ba" finished washing and turned, spied the fairy and wisp standing nearby, then gave them each a curt nod. He walked away down the hall, wings swishing behind him all long and glimmering. The pair exchanged a look. Fergus folded his hands over his face and backed into the wall until his own wings hit cloudstone. Then he slid down, scattering startled ducks.

"Baltimore?" Magalee asked incredulously. She stared after the departing fairy. "No way. He's too smart to be a drone. He's a poindexter. Though come to think of it, his hips do look a little narrow. I guess I'm always too busy checking out his wings to notice." She lifted her crown with one finger. "Wowza. Shrimp got game in the back. Whimpin? Where'd you disappear to?"

"… That one. I want _that_ one."

She found him sitting on the floor with the fluffy collar of his coat pulled up to his nose. Fergus stared up at her, only guessing how wide his eyes must seem from the outside. His tongue lay heavy in his mouth, puddled in saliva. He really wanted an ice cream cone right now, because his entire face was way too hot. Magalee sighed and crouched down to pat his arm.

"Oh, loverboy… I don't think either one of us is getting him, sweetie. He's a bookworm, but he's still out of our league. We don't even know if he's a drone yet. Anyway, you don't want Baltimore. He's always too busy reading ahead in his textbooks to notice a wonderful gyne like you."

 _Baltimore_. Fergus didn't fight the lump swelling in his throat. He wanted to touch his hands against the sides of Baltimore's sweater, pressing them in until he felt skin and understood his shape. He wanted to lift him onto the stool of a bar and then lean back on his elbows with a cold soda, chatting about books he hadn't read and asking for recommendations he didn't plan to get around to checking out.

Scratch that. He didn't want to read "for fun". Reading "for fun" was a waste of valuable time that would be put to better use doing something else, like reading up on court cases and recent news. He just wanted to listen to Baltimore tell him about what _he'd_ been reading. Fergus could envision it now- the two of them walking down the school hallway, Baltimore trotting along, hands clenched in front of his chest and his eyes shining as he gabbled, he himself following at a slower pace with his hands stuffed in his pockets and a small smile on his face. He wanted to know what lit the short drake's world up, what made him dance with passionate energy. He wanted to drawl on about politics and listen to Baltimore enthuse over how such and such he'd read was going to change Fairy World. No. All the Worlds. He wanted to be there when Baltimore published a book himself, wanted to be there when Baltimore was brought into interviews to talk about his work before adoring crowds, wanted to be there to push the dark blue hair down over his face in jest, wanted to be there if Baltimore ever had kids of his own…

"He doesn't talk much," Magalee murmured as though she'd tapped into his mind. "You'd get lonely. You need someone more open and energetic. Someone who can take your sass. You deserve better than Baltimore."

He pushed her off and wrapped his arms around his knees. This hid the rest of his face in a convenient fabric package while leaving just enough of his body recognizable that this ducks didn't get confused and wander off. One of them was scrounging around the tall garbage can for food crumbs. Almost immediately, however, Fergus hopped up and marched over to the washing basin. There were still two full buckets left this morning. He grabbed one and rubbed down his entire face. Then his hands and forearms for good measure, all the way up to his elbows. Blessed chilly water. He tried inhaling air through his mouth the whole time. Finished, he turned back to face Magalee, but kept his hands gripping the rim of the basin. He puffed out his cheeks.

"If you're feeling it, that means your adult wings are coming in soon," was all she said.

"No more Easter ducks after this batch," Fergus realized. He wasn't sure how that made him feel.

* * *

 _Autumn of the Blue Roses_

This was one of the larger and noisier magical towns that littered Planet Earth, bubbled up in a layer of warm Fairy magic that kept out the freezing weather of the Great Ice Times to some degree. Bayard, the people called it. It was a coastal cliff-side town by the Atlantis Ocean, famous for both its beauty and its distance from the Rainbow Bridge to Fairy World that touched down on the opposite end of the continent.

Fergus wasn't crazy about the place even on his best days. It stank of fish and salt, and the people who lived there were always loudest in the mornings he needed sleep the most. But, he was an adult on his own now, and the town of Bayard had work for him. He rented a tiny place, and he was doing okay for himself, considering he and Ambrosine had cut ties and parted ways on such bad terms all those centuries ago. That was fine. He didn't need Whimsifinado money. He was okay.

Bayard was a place that attracted attention. Its high position on the cliffs made it perfect for watching breaching sea serpents and mermaids out in the ocean, as well as roaming animals if one looked inland instead. It had its architecture, its royal family - the habetrot ambassador to the Fairy Council and her relatives - and its share of culture too. Habetrot were renowned for their spinning wheels and embroidery, so there were always beautiful garments to be made, marketed, and sold in Bayard.

Problem: The town only had one pub. Not only was it located on the highest cliffs, far from the residences of poorer folk like him, but it was close enough to the royal castle that the wealthy types frequented it often. Certain precautions had to be taken to ensure their safety and optimal level of comfort. Respect to all and a regal air was a must, which almost defeated the pub's purpose altogether. Still.

There was something about the music there that lured Fergus up the chalky cliffs week after week. Which was weird. His father was a singer, so a stubborn streak in his genes didn't want to be caught liking anything of the kind. He'd never much cared for music before. Especially not this kind. It was more somber than upbeat, for the elites liked it that way, and they were the ones with coin. That alone drove many of the rebellious youth to boycott it every so often. But, again, only pub in town. Everyone had their vices and needs. People learned to deal.

The Fairy outside the door was unreasonably short, for a bouncer. He carried himself more like an orc than a tiny duende without a crown. "You're a gyne," he said, arms folded firmly. "The pub is neutral territory. You have to scarf yourself if you want in."

Fergus considered clobbering the short Fairy, then decided it was less effort to put on the scarf. Oh, the scarf. One day reform would come and adult gynes wouldn't be subject to covering their pheromones every time they stepped out in public, but for now, that was the rule. Fergus was nothing if not obedient to the rules. Most of them. And his scarf was nice. He'd commissioned it specially upon arrival in Bayard with almost every coin he still had. It wasn't thick cotton that would make one sweat too easily, but beautiful purple silk. Fergus drew it from his satchel and slung it around his neck as instructed to. He tied it with a double knot in the front. It wasn't pretty, but it was practical. It counted.

"That stays on," said the duende, and the first note of nervousness crept into his voice. Poor kid. Someone should teach him the power behind a proper, confident monotone.

"Scarf on," Fergus acknowledged. "I'd like to go inside now."

The pub had attracted a small crowd tonight. A few patrons were seated at the bar or in one of several booth seats lined along the same wall as the entrance. Other Fairies hovered on the left side of the pub in front of the stage, dripping rings and necklaces, long fingers clutching tall sodaglasses of sparkling drink. Brownies floated among them with laden trays of fresh fruit or dirty dishes, dressed in all black uniforms and keeping their eyes politely downcast.

The usual band was already up on the rounded stage, all four of them with swooping or spiky hair that ranged between purple and blue. One of them raised his head as Fergus floated by, then turned his attention on the springcase in his lap, and hunched into his wings. He'd rosined his bow to the point that it was a miracle he had any rosin left. The strings looked about ready to snap. The lead singer's tongue was lolling, as though he'd just hollered exhausting lyrics at the top of his voice and needed a moment to recuperate. Someone in the crowd called, "Play _River Valley Races_ tonight."

Fergus rolled his eyes. An upbeat song like that one? Sure. He turned to drift away, when a soft voice called him back.

"Excuse me, Mr. Gyne."

He was a gyne. He turned back. The speaker was the drake with the springcase, seemingly shocked that he'd even opened his mouth. He plowed on anyway.

"You… you come here to the pub a lot, but you never make requests for our music. Now's your chance."

Fergus paused. He shifted his weight between his wings, very aware of the eyes turning his way. "Um. Sure. That would be jazzed. What do you know? Just Earthside stuff? Or cloudland music too? I'm from the cloudlands myself."

The springcase player shrugged. "Whatever you want. If we can't play it, you can pick another."

The lead singer glanced over his shoulder warningly. "And then after that, we take a request from someone else."

"Of course."

What should he request? Music was fine, but Fergus wasn't all that crazy over it. A song was a song. Not only that, but the elites would expect something slow and proper. He preferred a quicker pace with a strong, steady beat.

"How about, _Charter Pine_?" Perfect. That was an Earthsider song, with some message about some drake who'd been struck dumb after breaking Da Rules and forced to beg for scraps from the Anti-Fairies or something. It was chipper, but had a dreary moral to it.

"Oh, that's one of my favorites." The springcase player turned his attention on the lead singer. "Would it be okay if I sang that one? Just this once?"

"You play, I sing," the singer said simply, adjusting his bola tie.

Fergus bid them both good luck and picked his way towards the bar itself. He took careful care to skirt the darting brownies. He didn't even make it to the counter before he was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. Since he'd just broken out of the crowd and it probably wasn't an accident, he decided to look.

Oh.

The figure who had tapped him floated quite a bit above the ground. His clothing was nice, though not as exquisite as those of the royals. The heavy sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing dark brown freckles up and down his arms. Beefy arms. He balanced a large red drink in one hand. Freckles lined his sharp jaw too, running from his neck to his nose. Fergus made the instant decision to behave submissively to the older, stronger gyne. He touched down on the pub floor. To further demonstrate that he didn't intend to cause any trouble, he traced the signal pattern for _Most honored_ along his neck with his fingertips, then bowed with one hand behind his back and his wings splayed.

"Jasper Higgins, if I'm not mistaken. I've been instructed I'll want to admire you, and I can't say I disagree with the reasons why. You appear strong in the wing, and I'm sure your brains aren't any farther behind."

Jasper allowed his eyes to wander over him from his broken, floating crown to the black shoes he normally took extra care not to scrape in the dust and mud. "You've been in town for a few months now, stranger, but I've never gotten your name. Come." He gestured to the nearest booth. "Sit with me."

"I think I'd prefer to stand, sir."

Jasper arched both his eyebrows even archier than they had already been. He slid into the booth seat anyway. "You seem very nervous."

"I'm a gyne. You're a gyne. You approached me. Gynes kill gynes. You look a little tougher than I usually handle. I think I have a right to be nervous, yes."

Jasper chuckled and let two fingers fall into place beside his eye. His elbow went on the table. His wings frisked back and forth behind him as he adjusted his legs. "I wish to discuss business with you."

Fergus pricked his ears, but remained a wary distance. "What sort of business?"

"Gyne business. You see, my son's taken a liking to you over the last several weeks."

"If you're offering his hand in marriage, I'll have to turn you down. I'm looking for a wife to mother my biological nymphs. I'm not interested in drakes."

Jasper nodded. "You misunderstand. My son is a drone."

Oh.

Wait. What?

Jasper read the confusion printed on his face as clearly as the sunlight, and nodded. He raised his drink to his lips. "My son is a drone. He's, oh, about your age. Perhaps a little younger. Take a seat. We'll talk."

Still in a daze, Fergus took hold of the back of the booth and plopped down across from him.

"He's a good man. My only drake. I wish to give him away to someone who'll take genuine care of him. He's asked me to consider you. I've been watching the way you conduct yourself in the marketplace. I know you're a businessman at heart. Let's make an arrangement, gyne to gyne."

"… What?" Fergus' mind reeled as he attempted to decipher the meaning behind Jasper's words. He was prepared to give his son away to a stranger, just like that? Back during his father's time, before the war, a gyne could walk into the residence of any town crier and request a list of all the drones registered to gynes in the surrounding area. _Canterbury v. Oakwing_ had changed that. Now, it was getting to be so a gyne had to actually weasel that sort of information out in casual conversation with the drone himself. So unfair. So much work. And now, here was this gyne, just- just- prepared to-

"What?" he said again.

A slow nod. "I want to know if you have what it takes to bring my son under your wing. No tricks. No strings. What's your story? Convince me you're a fine bloke, and no one has to get hurt."

Fergus moved his eyes from Jasper's face to the door of the pub. Then they moved back again. He tightened his fingers around the table's edge. "And if I don't win your favor, you don't plan to let me leave this place alive tonight. Right?"

"Well." Jasper smiled a little wider, though his eyes remained pleasant and only half open. It made Fergus a little envious, just seeing how calm and businesslike that burly man could make himself appear, like nothing fazed him. "That's how these discourses typically end, ain't it? There can be blood and dust coming out of this, but there doesn't have to be. Make me an offer. Spin a yarn, or snap a wand."

"Then I'll begin with introductions." Not that the story was what Jasper was really here to observe him for. He wanted to assure himself of the same thing every drone did: Dominance. No drone wanted to belong to a gyne of low social standing who spent his days emitting borderline submissive pheromones. Pushing himself to force the power move, Fergus leaned away from the table and signalled for a waiter with a swoop of his hand (Shame he'd never learned to snap his fingers). He kept his eyes on Jasper's face even when the brownie girl made her appearance. Inwardly it was a little mortifying, for Ambrosine, for all his faults, had instilled him with a sense of manners. He ought to look at her when he ordered food and drink. But fortunately, the waitress observed the freckles on the faces of both patrons, and kept her mouth shut. "One serving of rain deer venison," Fergus said to her, and then to Jasper, "My name is Fergus Whimsifinado."

A flicker of interest passed along Jasper's face when he heard the family name. "A socialite with a Fairy World name wandering Earthside in rags instead of riches? Do tell."

"I'm heir to the mind and magic therapy business, Wish Fixers. It's located in the town of Novakiin."

"Never heard of it."

"It's situated along a thin strip of cloudland on the other side of the Tortoiseshell Peaks from Faeheim. A wealthy neighborhood. Small. Clean. Charming."

As the Fairies on stage began to play a new song, Jasper inclined his head. "Go on."

"I was originally enrolled in the Academy to begin my training in the field of psychology. But that wasn't what I wanted. Within a month, I convinced my father to allow me time to wander Earth on sabbatical, so that I might get in touch with the minds and circumstances of Earthside dwellers who come from a much different background than I did." Technically, none of that was a lie. He'd just omitted the part where he and his father had broken into a brawl over it, and he'd been forced to run away. It had been centuries and Ambrosine hadn't come to haul him back, so clearly he'd conceded to the stubbornness of his son. Not untrue.

"Interesting…" Jasper took the table's complementary salt shaker by its top and slid it to the towards the wall. His fingers lingered on its lid, tempting probably every Anti-Fairy for cloudlengths. But, he didn't tip it over, and withdrew his hand. "Ever wrangled drones before, Fergus?"

"I admit that I have not. But, I did raise ducklings and geese every decade since I was 5,000 until I moulted into my adult wings. I also took a few classes in school. Since I do lack experience where actual drones are concerned, I'm grateful for the opportunity to start my wrangling off with one instead of multiple." Phrased with perfect confidence in Jasper's willingness to agree in the end.

The conversation continued in that businesslike manner as food was brought out and gradually eaten. "Final question." Jasper leaned in, clasping his hands. "Do you have any questions for me?"

Every alarm in Fergus' brain fired at that moment. Questions? This conversation hadn't prepared him to ask questions of a more dominant gyne. That went against every teaching in Fairy society. Their hierarchy was their hierarchy, and it was expected that certain protocols would be followed. For one thing, you didn't make demands of either drakes or damsels above you unless you wanted the dust on your butt handed back on a copper platter. Fergus clamped his fingers around the edge of the table, rubbing the underside with the pads of his thumbs.

"What does your son expect from me, and what advice do you have for me when it comes to looking after him?"

Jasper fingered the rim of his sodaglass. "He's thoughtful. Be sure to heed his advice now and again. Beware falling into the traps of stereotypes. I used to believe them all, until I had my first. To tell the truth, drone or not, I think my son may be smarter than all my daughters. He's quiet, but powerful in mind. And, there's this. Always remember that if you've looked after one drone, you've looked after _one_. Not all of them. Every drone is distinct. Be patient, be gentle, and never forget to express your appreciation. Drones don't ask for much, but they do value appreciation."

"Excellent." Fergus started to reach across the table with his right hand, then recognized his error and exchanged it for his left. "When can I meet him?"

Jasper unclasped his hands and pointed one finger at the stage. "That's him up there."

As they shook to seal their deal, Fergus craned his head. "Bola tie? Front and center?"

"Back left."

Ah. Not the singer. That springcase player, with his solar system purple-blue hair sweeping behind him in an upwards crest, a bit like a cockatoo's. He took after his father's broad build, but only to a certain point. _Lanky_ was the term that came to mind. Broad-shouldered, but outfitted with long, skinny arms and large, clumsy hands.

And he was gazing directly across the pub at Fergus with an expression usually reserved for adolescent lovers giggling together on a balcony overlooking the gardens.

On impulse, Fergus yanked his scarf up over his mouth. His cheeks were about this close to imploding with confused heat. So this springcase player was the drone who had an interest in him? Should a drone be staring at him that way? Was that still against Da Rules, or did _Canterbury v. Oakwing_ change all of that? Did _Canterbury v. Oakwing_ even apply down on Earth? Why was it suddenly so hard to remember?

Honestly, Fergus had to admit to himself that he'd never actually stopped to wonder what drones thought about before. They were all just obedient, easily-confused, desexualized, empathy-lacking bobbleheads who lived to serve whichever Fairy nearby happened to produce the most dominant pheromones with unquestionable devotion. Right? People made jokes about drones flinging themselves into the line of fire for complete strangers, or murdering anybody who so much as managed to make their supervising gyne break a drop of sweat, or dumb enough to walk off the edge of the clouds and plummet without realizing they should flap their wings, all the time. The stereotypes were true, right?

Maybe?

Did drones actually think about what they wanted in a gyne? Did they gossip about things like that with their other little drone friends when no one else was around to hear? Could drones even _have_ preferences when it came to gynes?

 _He_ was somebody's preference?

What. _What?!_ But why.

Suddenly, it seemed to click for the drone on stage that he was making eye contact with a gyne who wasn't his own. At least not yet. Immediately he dropped his head, feeling the strings of his springcase up and down with flowing fingers. Fergus stood, not stepping away from the booth, just to see past all the heads. He sat down again.

"You should get closer," Jasper said casually. "I'll pay the tab."

Fergus needed no further urging. There was never a downside to moving away from another gyne. Clutching his satchel to his side so it wouldn't bounce obnoxiously against his hip, he pushed his way through the little crowd of jewelry-laden and/or half-sloshed patrons until he ended up right in front of the stage. The lead singer stepped forward. The keyboardist and panpiper stood at the ready. The springcase player sat in the back with his springcase on his lap, bow poised. At a signal from the singer, he strummed his fingers up and down the strings to incite a perky rhythm into the air, then went straight into the flowing part of the song with his diving bow. The singer pushed his hair back with his hand.

 _"I won't be stuck on Earth forever. But I won't go back to Fairy World again. That place weren't right for me as is now. So Da Rules would have to change before then."_

The purple-haired drake raised his head, his expression a wistful pout as he continued playing to the patting beat and his friend continued singing out.

 _"I fell in love on Earth and I'm a fairy. Da Rules would say my family's her and done. I think I'm ready for some kids now. It really don't hurt nobody to break that one. Look out. Look out. Look out. Look out. This rulebreaker's been called hooome!"_ The singer's hands went out to either side, arms bent down but wrists and fingers pointed up. _"And Fairy Court is nothing! Nothing! Nothing! They can't rob me of the ones I looove! And I left my will in a charter pine, but they can't take what's rightful mine-"_

They were good. Maybe not the greatest, but good. The crowd released small sparks of color into the air with their wands to signal polite applause when it was over. The singer blew kisses. The three instrument players began to pack their things away. Was that it? The night was still young. Oh. Duh. The other entertainers were coming in for their shift. They wanted a turn.

Hand over hand, Fergus moved along the rounded stage until he hovered near the back. The purple-haired drake in front of him strummed his springcase quietly. Everyone was infatuated with the singer, or perhaps with the keyboarder. No one minded him. He glanced up briefly when Fergus stopped.

"You know, you play very well."

The drake hiked up his springcase, dropping his gaze to the floor. "I only just started a decade ago."

 _You should say thank you when someone gives you a compliment._ He didn't say it. Drones didn't know how to show proper appreciation; that's just how they were. It wasn't his fault. Correct him, wait for him to repeat it back, and move on with the conversation.

Wait. No. That… wasn't right. People said that. People taught that stuff to gynes. He'd learned all that in class, about how drones needed correction, and it was the duty of the gyne to make them learn. But that… wasn't really right, in practice. Was it? This drake knew how to play an instrument. Surely he knew how to say thank you too. Maybe he was just nervous, and that's why he didn't say it. That could be it.

Fergus blinked at the top of the smaller fairy's head, and decided not to demand that he say "Thank you" any more than he'd demand it if he'd walked up naturally assuming that this drake was a kabouter instead of a drone. Instead he said, "Well. I liked it. What's your name?"

"Cosmo. Cosmo Higgins."

Fergus could have kicked himself. Duh. That should have been his first guess. Probably 1 in every 10 fairies you ran across in a year was named Cosmo. People should really stop naming their babies Cosmo. No one liked an overplayed joke. Well. Apparently all the people naming their babies Cosmo did.

"Higgins. That's an Earthside name, I see."

"Yes. My father hails from Fairy World, but he chose to take an Earthside name when our family left the cloudlands behind after the fairy baby mandate." He continued staring down at the stage, fingers tight around the neck of his springcase and his bow. When his feet shifted, the wood creaked.

What was he supposed to say? He was just floating there like a starstruck smoof. Hey smoof-for-brains, get talking.

"I liked it," Fergus blurted again. "I liked your music. It's good. I don't sing. I never sing. Not for anybody. But I studied the springcase for a few centuries myself. My father made me learn how. You play it better than I ever did."

"Thank you, sir," Cosmo mumbled. For one instant, he glanced up. Again. Their gazes linked. His eyes were piercing blue, almost silver or white, just like chips of ice. His eyebrows peaked beneath his sweeping hair with a mix of concern and hope. Like he was waiting for something. Then, remembering the proper etiquette regarding eye contact and strangers, he looked back at the floor. Again. Fergus held up his hands.

"It's okay. You don't have to do that. We're talking. This is a conversation. You can look at me."

"Not… yet," was the hesitant reply.

"Well, when you want to, you can look. Cosmo. I like that name."

"It's common."

"Don't care. It suits you. But…" Fergus tapped his forefinger against his cheek. "There's something about you that absolutely rubs me the wrong way."

That prompted yet another split-second peek at his face.

"It's your father's pheromones lingering around you," he finished, and offered his hand. "Ever thought of switching them out for mine?"

* * *

 _Winter of the Blue Roses_

Cosmo was the only drone among four sisters. It was his family's intention that he be sent off in style. There wasn't a ceremony. This wasn't a marriage. This temporary relationship might not last longer than a few millennia, or maybe a few dozen if they were lucky.

But Cosmo's whole family crammed together on the porch to see him off, exchanging hugs and pats and tears all around. Jasper had opened an entire bottle of orange cream soda, and everyone had drunk their fill without spilling over.

Once the good-byes were final (For now, at least- Heck, he only lived down the cliff a ways) and Cosmo fluttered down the steps with his suitcase dangling from his arm, Fergus took his shoulder off the wall. He straightened up, though didn't slide his hands from his pockets. "Ready to go?"

Cosmo bobbed his head enough times to ward off a rattlesnake. "Yes. Is it far to walk?"

"If we didn't have wings and had to zigzag our way down the cliffs, it would take longer. But we can fly. And when I get around to re-certifying my wand license, or after you see the place yourself for the first time, then we'll be able to _poof_. And you know, you can look me in the eyes now."

"Not yet," Cosmo insisted, watching his feet as they moved along the edge of the cliff. "I can wait a little longer. I want to be a little traditional about this."

"Preening tonight?"

Cosmo tucked his hair behind his ear. "Do you mind?"

"Mm." Fergus glanced up at the sky. The clouds were unreasonably puffy tonight. "To tell you the truth, you're the first drone I've ever kept."

"I wondered about that. I know you're scarfing now, but I can still pick up a little. You do smell like a…" Cosmo waved his hand in front of his face.

"Virgin." He rolled his eyes. "I know. I don't care. I'm way too young to want to do that stuff. For the record, I'm a virgin by choice. Frankly, I don't care if my extra layer of pheromones never switches on. I'm just not interested in anyone right now. I'm sure I'll get around to finding a wife someday, but right now, that's not really in the cards. You get virgin gyne pheromones. Sorry."

Cosmo shrugged and smiled in a cheery way. He buzzed out over the open sky and spun around just once. When he slowed, the suitcase bounced against his knees. "I don't mind. I'm not just here for your pheromones."

Fergus slowed his pace, keeping one hand on the wall of the cliff. He turned his head. "Wait. What? What else is there to possibly want? In case you haven't noticed, I'm really not much of a catch. Most of this weight I'm carrying isn't muscle."

"You're around my age," Cosmo said seriously. "That was important to me. I've never had a gyne besides my father, and you've never had a drone aside from Easter ducks and training classes. When we do get gynes moving into Bayard, so many of them get envious and hot-headed when they learn of my father's wealth and standing. My family's been keeping bets ever since you first showed up. We wondered how long it would be before you lost your temper. But you didn't."

"Call it a selfish sense of self-preservation."

"It kept you alive. Plus, I just liked you. I've heard some of the sarcastic comments you make when you think no one else is listening. I've heard you trick angry people into calming down instead of beating you up. You make me laugh."

"Well. I am pretty likable."

Neither said anything else until they'd nearly reached the bottom of the cliff-face. Fergus found his little hole in the wall (literally) and pushed the curtain aside so Cosmo could fold up his wings and step through. It occurred to him then that the drone wasn't wearing any shoes. The bare stone floor was white and pretty, but it probably chilled his feet. _Idiot_. _Did he forget we were going out today? What's he doing?_

Wait. No. That wasn't right. Cosmo came from an involved, caring family. They were certainly rich enough to own footwear. If Cosmo was bright enough to play the springcase, he probably knew how to put on shoes. Maybe he just didn't like wearing them. Or maybe there was some kind of ceremonial, sort of spiritual reason why he wanted to walk into his new gyne's place with bare feet. Who knew.

"This is my place of business." Fergus pointed at each object in the room one by one. "That's my book and clothes shelf. That's my bed. That's the bed your mom _poof_ ed down for you. That's my box of cereal. That's my window. What do you think?" He hadn't lit any candles, but there was enough light coming in from outside that the outlines of various shapes were visible.

"I love it."

"It's common," Fergus confessed, letting the curtain fall behind him.

"It's perfect." Cosmo trailed over to the window. He let his soft bag drop to the floor and raised his hand to his eyes, peering out over the ocean. "Oh. The beach is so pretty down here."

"Is it? I didn't notice."

"Can we hear the waves from here?"

Fergus sat on the end of his bed and stretched his arms. "You can late at night when it's really quiet, unless the parties get too loud. Are you hungry? Your family fed us well. I'm stuffed."

Cosmo turned around. He braced his hands on the windowsill behind him. "No. I'm not hungry."

"Good."

Electric hesitation. Burning at their tongue tips. Fergus looked at Cosmo. Then away. He scratched his knee. Cosmo looked at the floor. He cleared his throat.

"So… Are you too full for preening tonight?" He kicked his heel against the floor. "I mean. That's what we're supposed to do now, isn't it? So I can learn your dominance pheromones?"

"Too full? No. Too drunk?" Fergus massaged his temples. "I hope not."

Cosmo's shoulders and wings relaxed together. Releasing the window, he took a few steps forward. "Of course, every gyne does their preening ritual differently. Some even do it differently for each of their different drones. I know I'm your first, but have you ever worked out a plan as to how you want it done?"

"Uh… Yeah. That's certainly something I got around to."

"It's all right if you haven't," Cosmo said, the tiniest, most innocent note of scolding in his voice. He stood in the center of the carved-out room, with its slightly lumpy floor and sharp square corners. He rested his hands on his waist. "I'll help you figure out what you like and what you don't. Over the years, I've tried out different things. We'll do this together. Where would you like to start?"

Fergus… scratched his head. Preening had never been one of his top interests. In the back of his mind, despite his protests, he'd always kinda figured it was inevitable that he would gather drones someday. Maybe even as many as two at the same time. But still, the idea had always seemed so far away. It was a weird thing to think about, and he didn't really like it. He didn't know enough about it to have preferences.

Sure, he had a basic idea. Gyne tongue goes on drone face here, drone tongue goes on gyne neck there. Figure A, Figure B. Everyone said it was this wildly intimate and precious, protected thing and the greatest experience a gyne and drone can have together, that sort of stuff. Drones had to make all escalating moves, lest a gyne be accused of forcing them against their will. He'd been over this. He'd made art projects about this. He'd written essays on this. He'd demonstrated this with a partner in class and scored a five-star grade.

No one else seemed to care that it was weird to lick another drake's face like that. Just him. Figure A. Figure B. Plain and simple. It seemed so easy in practice. He'd never actually done it in real life, though.

"Let's go through this bit by bit," Cosmo suggested patiently, his dark shape silhouetted by the window and the clouds in the night sky. "Should we wear day clothes, pajamas, or even less than that?"

"What? Uh- Day clothes are good." Why was that a question? Had Cosmo come here expecting them to _undress_ together? That would be weird even if they pulled on pajamas afterward. Changing clothes was sort of an intimate thing. You didn't just do it in front of people. What the smoof? Who was out there doing that? They'd just met this week. Fergus didn't even like sleeping with his shirt off when he was alone. There was a reason pajamas were a thing. They were for wearing. Why would you not use them for their intended purpose?

Maybe he was biased towards pajamas. He'd been wearing pajamas when he ran away from Fairy World all those years ago. With an unactivated wand to his name, he hadn't had any other clothes to switch into as he wandered Earth in search of a place to settle for a little while. He liked pajamas.

"Day clothes," Cosmo said, no judgment in his voice. "Next question. Should we do this standing, sitting, or lying down?"

"Standing's good." Why was lying down with a drone an option? Gross. Gross. Gross. Don't think about how there were probably gynes out there who did that. Don't wonder if you'll ever have a drone who's been intimate even further than preening with another gyne before. How does that even work? Don't wonder how that even works. Was it wrong to judge a drone by what he'd done with previous gynes? It was taboo to discuss it, but was it wrong to be weirded out by the thought? Was it wrong that he wished he was Cosmo's first? Did they really have to go this far tonight? Why was this room so small? Had it always been this high up the cliff?

"How would you like me to approach you so we can begin?"

Fergus was pretty sure "Not at all" would not be the proper answer. It also wasn't… the true answer? After all, he was a gyne. He'd been taught Figure A, Figure B his entire life. He wanted this. Badly. If he didn't get answers tonight, he'd feel like he lost out. Dear dust, he wanted to _feel_ it inside. This amazing preening thing. He was honestly curious to see how it all came together to be this beautifully intimate exchange. He just sort of wished he could be observing another gyne and drone pair first instead of going through the motions himself. Was that creepy? He probably shouldn't fantasize about what it would be like watching someone else during one of their most private, tender moments. Fergus rubbed his hand behind his neck, fingers catching in the silky folds of his scarf.

"I don't… care. Why don't you just do your thing? I'll just… do my part."

"You can take that off now," Cosmo said quietly. His wings beat just a hint more rapidly. "We're not out in town, and I want to be yours. I have to get your pheromones for that."

"Oh. Right. I guess I should do that." Fergus picked at the double knot, finally managed to untangle it, and turned away to fold the scarf up and place it on his shelf. Cosmo was on his toes when he turned back around, holding his cheek. He nodded.

"Give me a second to practice on the air. Then I'll try it on you." Cosmo put out his hands as though Fergus was standing directly at his side, and gave him a slight bump with his hip to push him away. Was that what he was doing? Why was he doing that? Were his hips always that thin? Was it because he was a drone? Was that a thing? People said it was a thing, though Fergus was pretty sure he'd seen exceptions before.

Cosmo pulled an imaginary figure towards him and spun it around. The way he flowed made him look just like a picture in a preening instruction manual. Why had he turned his back? Why was he spreading his wings like that as he moved? That was weird. This cave hole was too small for spread wings. He'd bump into something and crumple them. Silly drone. Seriously, what?

Wait. It may not be practical, but was there another reason he held his wings like that? Was he trying to show them off? Did he think Fergus… _wanted_ to look at his wings there in the dark? What? What did he think Fergus was going to do just watching them from the other side of the room? Why was he still facing backwards? Were drones allowed to face gynes backwards? Did Cosmo think he was going to come forward and touch them? Was Fergus supposed to do that? Is that why he was shaking them like that? Why would he want to do that?

Cosmo stopped midstep, his arms still poised in the air. Then he checked over his shoulder. "What if we included a dip?"

Fergus looked behind him. There was just a blank wall. Then he turned back to Cosmo again, and brought both hands near his chest. "Wait. Do you mean me? Oh, no. I can't be dipped. I'm too big and heavy. It wouldn't work."

Cosmo looked him directly in the eye, and held out his upturned hand. A little warily, Fergus walked over and accepted it. Cosmo yanked him forward, wrapped one arm behind his waist and below his wings, pulled him around so Fergus leaned over his leg, and dipped his head down so far, his feet left the ground. A wingbeat of vertigo kicked in immediately. Fergus grabbed the drone's shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut.

"What-?"

"Any drone can learn to dip a gyne," Cosmo insisted. "We're Fairies. Our heads are full of helium. We don't weigh very much. What do you think?"

"I- I-"

What in the name of dust? What _did_ he think? Well. He wanted to know how a noodle like Cosmo could sweep him up and over like that, for one thing.

It felt nice.

"I almost feel like… a prince," Fergus managed, though he didn't open his eyes. It sounded dumb. Cosmo didn't seem to care.

"Okay. That's good. If you like that move, we'll keep it."

Why didn't he put him down? How long was he going to keep him upside-down like that? Fergus cracked open one eyelid. Cosmo's expression turned more tender as he floated there, holding the larger gyne almost the same way he held his springcase when he was really in the groove. He lowered his head, his tongue breaking from between his lips.

Wait. Suddenly they were doing this _now?_ Was that how it worked? So you didn't offer an exact list of what you planned to do, it was more like a spontaneous fight than a scripted ritual, and you just- Oh. Oh, like that. That's how it worked. Tongue goes there. It slides over and upward like a kiss below the ear. Figure A. Figure B.

Cosmo made a few opening markings to signal his desire to proceed, light and shallow, then withdrew his tongue. "Are you ready?"

"I'm ready." He was still upside-down. Cosmo seemed fine holding him like that, so… apparently that's how they were doing it? Every gyne had his own signature stuff he did before the preening started, and apparently this was his now. Okay. Envisioning the models and arrows drawn on the blackboard, Fergus drew his tongue hard and deep across Cosmo's cheek. He had to reach pretty far, but Cosmo bent low enough that it didn't put too much strain on his neck. When he'd done that rasping thing for a few minutes, he pulled his head back. "When is it official so you can look me in the eyes?"

"We'll know."

What was that supposed to mean? Maybe he meant when the symbols were done. Rough tongue scrapes always came first to ensure the pores were sufficiently open and ready. The swirling symbols that carried meaning came later. Twelve standard dominance signs, twelve standard submissive ones. There were others too, affectionately referred to as "unlockables" among the younger generations. Occasionally you stumbled across a drone who dared to innovate in an entertaining way, deviating from the usual practice, revealing a signature slip-up or hitch or tell. It was supposed to be fun. _Collect them all._ Fergus assumed that was a joke. He hoped it was a joke. That would be weird if it wasn't.

They hadn't even moved forward from the beginning parts to the meaningful symbols when Cosmo stopped and looked down at him. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Y-yeah."

"Do you want to take a break?"

"Yeah."

Cosmo set him back up on his feet. Slowly. "You're clenching your hands in my shirt pretty tight. Right around where my wings are. You've scratched up your fingernails somehow."

Fergus looked down to see that he was right. "They're short because I chew my nails. They're always like this."

They waited a moment, twisting their hands. One of them coughed. The other looked away.

"Are we still going to preen tonight? Sir?"

"Oh. Oh, we can still do it. I just… Yes? We should? I dunno. I like the _idea_ of preening, I guess. Ever since your father approached me last week and we talked everything out, I've been daydreaming about this. It's supposed to be great. I was excited. I just don't like it when it actually happens. It's too much to deal with." He scratched his arm. "Maybe we rushed this. We can try again next week."

Cosmo was silent. Dead eyes staring, but only for a moment. They burned like stars when they fell. Fergus licked his lips and made the attempt to speak again.

"I think it's too soon for this. For me. You're great- this is no offense to you. It's me. I think I just need more time before I can get into this. Let's try it again next week. Okay? Cosmo? I promise I'll be able to do it next week. Just give me a little time."

"That's not fair," Cosmo told the cold floor. "I need regular gyne pheromones, or I'll start losing my mind. You know that."

Fergus pressed his thumbs together. "I know. But I can't. Not right now."

He blinked a few times. "What are you saying? It's our first night when we're officially living together. We can't… _not_ preen. This is our night. We're allowed to do this. We're supposed to."

That about summed it up. He was being a baby about this. Fergus held his hands up near his chest. "It's not you. I'm just nervous because I've never done this before. Remember, you and your dad, I guess, have been doing this kind of stuff basically since you were born. It's new to me. Just be patient, and I'll try again."

He tried again. He let Cosmo dip him down again and everything, and then it all just sort of happened without any more breaks. After some time, they moved from surface licks to pheromone signals, and those went on for a while. It started to be soothing, at least compared to how he'd felt when they'd first started the ritual. A gyne and his drone. It was great.

"See?" When it was over, Cosmo held his gaze, and smiled. "That wasn't so bad, was it? You preen very well."

Fergus stared up at him blankly. His fingers tightened along Cosmo's spine. "I mean, I guess?"

"It just takes practice. You'll stop saying you're nervous after the first few weeks."

In a way, Cosmo was right. He didn't complain again. There wasn't a point to. Pet canines needed to be walked, pet felines needed their litter boxes changed. They came with responsibilities that you couldn't just ignore and act like they didn't need. Drones weren't exactly pets, but they still had needs. They needed pheromone exposure. Complaining wouldn't fix that. Fergus had heard once that you could practice the preening signals very well by licking the patterns onto your palm or the back of your wrist, which was as gross as it sounded, but at least it was practice. Soon he could perform every action exactly the way Cosmo expected him to without skipping a wingbeat. It got easier after a while. He only made the mistake of suggesting bottled pheromones from a donor once. After that? They never argued about a thing. It was perfect.

And you know? He _liked_ having a drone around to brighten up the place. Dear dust, he'd been alone for so long, almost ever since he'd left Fairy World. Cosmo proved himself to be a wonderful companion. It was like having an extra set of hands to help him, not to mention the fact that Cosmo actually had a wand. That made things easier. He'd do a lot of cooking, and play all the music on his springcase that anyone could ever want. The loud and bouncy music was especially impressive.

Yes. Living with an adult drone was a great deal easier than raising one as a child would have been. Fergus was sure of that. Such a shame that nothing could last forever. Not ducks, and not even drones.

It was at a party one evening, after more millennia than Fergus could count on one hand. He'd had too much to drink and they got separated, and it was all the chance some other random gyne needed to sweep in and steal Cosmo away like a shiny pebble. The guy didn't even have the decency to ask about Cosmo's stuff. He didn't even take the springcase. The last time Fergus spotted Cosmo, he was nestled comfortably underneath the other gyne's arm, gazing up at his face with an expression usually reserved for adolescent lovers giggling together on a balcony overlooking the gardens. It was just a glimpse as he was walked away with a hand around his lower back. He didn't say good-bye after everything they'd had. Drones were so disloyal that way.

What a thing to wake up to, heaving out your guts out on the front path of some club someplace, not so much as a single friend to your name.

* * *

 _Spring of the Charged Waters_

Sandy's birth began and ended with a question mark just outside a little dirt cave in a dark little hill. Inside again, out of the snowfall and away from the icy pond, Fergus rested on the end of his messy bed of cushions and held the tiny nymph in his cupped hands. The wind beat against the awkward wooden door. A single candle burned on the rickety structure that passed for a kitchen table in a cave meant for one. One gyne, no drones.

Sure, he'd had a few after Cosmo. Buck had perished in a blizzard like this one some centuries back, and the Hasten twins were clueless even if they were friendly. But when he'd gotten bored with them and their neediness, Fergus had cut them out of his life, and locked himself away. He didn't live in town anymore. Deliberately. He lived on his own in the hills, and he'd dug this cave out himself. For now he was, quite happily, alone. He didn't need drones after all. Take that, society.

So what just happened?

It seemed pretty likely that he and the fairy baby were related. Sandy had newborn-pink skin, lavender eyes, and a curl of black hair on his head, much like Fergus did. He was lumpy with an angular face. Fergus himself had also just given birth to the squirming thing, so there was that.

Who was the mother, though?

It wasn't that there were too many faces in his memories that they all blurred together. No. Fergus had the opposite problem. As near as he could remember, he'd never gone, mm, how do you say, _all the way_ with a damsel before. Oh, there had been one he'd wanted to… he'd really, really wanted to, and almost had… Long ago at an Academy party more than half his lifetime in his past, when their conversation had begun with digging for rocks in the sandpit as children and quickly turned to Anti-Fairy politics and to how oh, wasn't it funny that here they were at a party, and did either know if as children they'd despised each other or been in love? They couldn't remember.

But do you remember when you were a TA? You're looking well, you too. Want to dance? Thought you'd never ask. Care if I kiss you? I'd be delighted. Which of these sodas was yours? Can't recall. Probably grape, then; you taste like grape. Then you must have had the orange. It's not as private as we hoped under the stairs, but we already walked all the way over here. I don't mind. Actually, I do. Hang on. I know. Rented a room here; wasn't expecting to use it. My roommate has the key; we split the bill. Her idea; I wouldn't do this for anyone but you. Perfect. You get that key and I'll get a refill on our drinks. You know what this means, don't you, Fergus? Of course. When's the wedding, then? The Tuesday after our Year of Promise ends. My father will be furious. I never liked your father and I'm glad to hear it. There's my roommate now. Back in a moment. And I'll get those drinks. Good-bye. Good-bye. And the rest was history left unfinished.

Raves were such pleasant sources of entertainment that way. Conversation was so easy to strike up in a rave, with so many games and activities available, and external justification abounded and left a fellow without regrets. Raves were absolutely wonderful.

Mary Black, his hungover self had finally remembered was the name she'd given. Not Marina. He'd hardly spoken to her since their soft kiss in the library, which Magalee had jumped out and interrupted, because she was rude and thought herself a comedian. Mary hadn't ever explained where her family came by the money for Academy expenses. So many secrets between them, too little time for questions when the soda was pumping through their veins and the atmosphere itself practically drooled at the thought of stealing smooches in the dark.

 _Mary Black._ The name was so simple, so dull, and he adored the feel of it on his tongue more than he'd ever admit. He'd have to try to get in contact with her again one of these days so he could pick up with her where he'd left off. Someday. Eventually. Probably. It had been hundreds of thousands of years, but she'd want him, wouldn't she? She'd wanted him then. After all, if they'd planned to notch each other's wings a year after that half-drunk but unregrettable encounter, that meant she was the one he'd given his soul away to, right? If he married anyone else, he'd be guilty of serial monogamy.

But Sandy's mother wasn't Marina Black. It wasn't possible. No one was possible. Yes, okay, so he'd opened his door to travelers on occasion. It was the middle of the Great Ice Times; what else was he supposed to do? And yes, some of them had been damsels. But he'd never kissed a single one of them. Hadn't been interested.

Fairy pregnancy only lasted three months. Today was the last day of spring. He would have had to have gotten pregnant either during or just before the Naming of the Seasons. Yes, Nephel and Sasa _had_ paid a visit that day, and they _were_ all drunk on soda that night, but that didn't make sense. He didn't particularly like Sasa, and she barely tolerated him, the two of them acquaintances only through mutual respect they held for her husband. Nephel and Sasa had only come to celebrate the turn of the New Year with him for a few hours, and hadn't even stayed the night.

Wasn't that right? He didn't remember being _that_ sugarloaded on Naming Day. Couldn't be Sasa. Couldn't be anyone. It didn't make sense. It wasn't plausible. No. It wasn't _possible_.

Here they were anyhow. Fergus, only half-recovered from the loss of magic required to give birth, leaned back into his cushions and closed his eyes. He held his pointer finger to Sandy's lips so the nymph at least had something solid to suck on. It wasn't a bottle. They didn't have milk. It was a blizzard out there by now. No milk in a snowstorm meant the baby was soon doomed to die. Oh blitz, his head… He shouldn't have named his son Sandy. Now it had a name and he risked getting attached.

"Look at us," Fergus muttered. "No mother. No wife. Not even a drone to offer us some company. I shouldn't have bid good-bye to all of mine. What are we doing?" Then, yanking back his finger, "Ow! Stop biting me, you little devil."

Sandy, startled, began to wail. He reached out with his tiny hands, grasping the air. Fergus pinched his nose and rubbed his fingers up and down. Then, rolling over decidedly, he wrapped both arms around the nymph's stomach and held him so tightly, Sandy stopped screaming. He squirmed and squealed, then gave up and patted the hairs on Fergus' arms. For a few blissful minutes, they were embraced in silence. Then Sandy began to whine.

"What are you going to be when you grow up?" Fergus muttered without opening his eyes.

He wasn't asking about potential career paths. Even by his standards (especially by his standards), it was much too early to think about anything like that. Gynes could only produce kabouter offspring when they had daughters, and Sandy had proven himself to be male. What was his destiny, then? Gyne, or drone? It wasn't as though Fergus could just shimmy outside where the light was better and check. Too soon. Gyne freckles, if there were to be any, didn't come in for at least the first seven months. Nine on average. Maybe thirteen.

Sandy had learned he could kick and scratch with his fingers. Fergus loosened his arms, allowing the baby to weasel his way out and start the long crawl over to the edge of the bed. To be fair, the only glowing candle in the dim cave was sitting in a dish on the table over there too. It was an enticing thing for a newborn to want to touch. When Sandy reached the drop and made as if to keep going, Fergus reached out, caught him by the little foot, and dragged him backwards. Sandy yipped in alarm, desperate hands outstretched.

"Oh. So you don't even like me? I see how it is. Come here, you." Fergus held him to his chest. Sandy promptly climbed around him onto his shoulder, poking his fingers at the back of his neck. He climbed higher, scratching his foot against Fergus' ear as he struggled for a boost. His tiny wings were still coated in their flight casings, and _click click_ ed together whenever he moved.

"What are you doing up there?"

Sandy flopped over on the flattest part of Fergus' head, making bubbling noises with his cheeks puffed up and tongue sticking out. "Bleh."

"Stop it." Fergus reached up and pulled him off. When he looked at the nymph again, he realized he was holding him upside-down. Sandy's pudgy arms dangled towards the bed, while his legs were bent towards the ceiling. He turned Sandy over, placed him in his lap, and covered his eyes. He massaged his face for a long time.

"I don't know," Fergus forced himself to say at last, and that was hard - that was _so hard_ \- to look his child in the eyes and say that. "I don't fully know where I am. I don't know who your mother is. I don't know why you had to be born to a drake who can barely muster up the energy to take care of himself. I don't know how this happened at all. All I know is what I'm going to do about it."

Sandy squeaked twice in a row.

"That's right. I'm going to get you milk. Somehow. Even if I have to brave that terrible storm." Taking Sandy in his hands again, squeezing him very gently, Fergus lifted the nymph to his face and pressed their foreheads together as though they were touching cores and souls. "I'll find you a foster mother. I had a foster mother myself for twenty-nine years, so I know it will be okay. Scary, lonely, but you'll come out okay. I promise. A gyne's duty is to ensure the health of his drones before his own. It's snowing, and cold, and frankly I'm afraid. But I've had almost 500,000 years of living an okay life. I can spend a few days or even weeks doing this for you. I'll make sure you go to a good home, with people who actually know how to take care of you better than I can. That's the honor code we live by as a gyne and his drone."

Sandy grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and pulled it into two tufts at the front. Fergus sighed. It was kind of adorable. Absently, he brought his tongue to Sandy's forehead and gave him the tiniest lick ever. It wasn't a kiss. Just a preening lick, just because whatever. Nobody saw that, right?

He got up and put Sandy down on the floor. Sandy didn't want to stand up, so Fergus let him sit in the dirt for a moment. Sandy pulled on the leg of his pants, already complaining that he wanted to be picked up again. Wow. It's been one second. Calm down.

"In a minute, speck. We're going out. I need to make myself a coffee first, and get my coat." Shaking his head, Fergus walked towards the back of his cave, with Sandy chasing after his heels. He wasn't exactly a little duckling, but you almost couldn't tell the difference.


	43. (68) Gentlemanly

_Summary:_ Anti-Wanda and Anti-Cosmo have an argument and decide to settle things over lunch during what, in retrospect, could be called their first "date".

 _Characters:_ Anti-Wanda, Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Juandissimo, assorted anti-fairies

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "?" / "?"

 _Prerequisites:_ None; takes place somewhere between the _Frayed Knots_ chapters "Hot and Cold" and "Honey's Due"

* * *

 **68\. Gentlemanly** (Shortly after the War of the Angels)

 _Year of Breath; Spring of the Cheerful Turtles_

* * *

It never rained in the cloudlands.

Correction: It _almost_ never rained in the cloudlands. And good thing, too. Heavy rains tended to have unpredictable effects on magic, and the community as a whole. Businesses shut down unexpectedly. Fairy pheromones washed away. Random half-dissolved spells flowed through streets that lacked proper drainage. Their world wasn't equipped for it. Without pipes leading from the roofs to the ground, the puddles built up, cascading over the edges like sputtering waterfalls, while the soft building materials wore steadily thinner and threatened to cave in.

Anti-Wanda started the storm. She didn't mean to; it was an accident. And technically, she hadn't been working alone and wasn't the only one at fault. After all, it was the new High Count who'd gone and gotten himself tangled up with the nature spirit who wielded control over Water. It hadn't rained in the cloudlands for centuries, and _what_ was happening now that this Anti-Cosmo fellow had seized the throne? Gee whiz. Maybe emotionally unstable people shouldn't be allowed to act as mediums to demigods. He clearly didn't know how to do it right without freaking out over issues as small as stubbing his toe. This was gonna take some getting used to. For everyone.

As the rain beat down harder and harder, like nails burying into shoes, Anti-Wanda stood in the dirty street underneath a blue umbrella with her dear boyfriend Anti-Juandissimo, holding the heel of her hand to her eye and trying to explain for the _one krakazillionth time_ to the stuck-up architects why they needed to stop making so many "pretty" buildings in Luna's Landing and start making more practical ones that could handle the rain. Ironically, the more frustrated she got, the harder the rain fell, and the more damage the post office took as a result. Such things tended to happen when you acted as the mortal medium of the nature spirit who embodied the Sky.

The new High Count (his name was Anti-Cosmo, and no one was surprised) slapped his hands against his chest, stepping forward while the architects behind him shrank against one another for comfort as his fury broke. "I say, I don't have the foggiest idea what you want from me, woman! I'm the one who spent centuries - nay, millennia! - training as an architect. What do you know about any of this? I am High Count. I want this crystal roof replaced with another one precisely like it."

Anti-Wanda pushed her hand up towards her eyebrow. "Listen. Listen, y'all know we wouldn't have ta spend so much money rebuilding business stuff if you'd just kick your butt into designing it right the first time around."

Anti-Cosmo crossed his arms in an X, then flung them out to either side. "Oooh, I should think _not!_ Your blueprint designs are far too radical to implement, Anti-Wanda. Are you daft? Throw the switch on those and you'll _completely_ throw off the flow of karma throughout the entire establishment. Prosperity, peace, and stable mental health will plummet! Not on my head. I daresay I am morally obligated to refuse your advances." Folding the arms behind his back, he lowered his head and began to pace back and forth in front of the door. "Although I fail to see why I need _your_ approval to rebuild this structure in the first place. I am, after all, High Count now."

"Y'all literally instated me as your financial adviser on the camarilla court," she groaned. She threaded her fingers through Anti-Juandissimo's; he squeezed her hand in silent support. "Like it or wear it, this is how the facts gotta be goin' down today, buddy."

"Don't _'buddy'_ me, dame!" Whipping around, spraying droplets from his blue hair, Anti-Cosmo stamped his foot in a glittering purple puddle. "As High Count, I order you to have this crystal dome replaced by tonight."

"Why, though?" She pointed at the post office with her thumb. "You wanna get a roof for this place that ain't gonna collapse next time it rains. It's the rotten cloudstone in the structure. It dissolves. Gotta tear it out and start over."

Again with the crazy arms. They flew into the air above his head, clenched into fists at the ends. "It almost never rains here anyway."

"Well, it's sure raining now." She expected him to lean his head away when she thrust her face into his, because she was taller and he'd always ducked away before. Every time before. But not today. Today Anti-Cosmo squinted up at her with both eyes, even though one was blind and one clenched a monocle. He mashed his claws into fists at his sides. His lips trembled. Flecks of hail crept into the rain, slicing skin and catching in blue fur.

"Ooh, why, you impudent little pest! Can't we simply progress to the part of this scene where you authorize the funding for repairs and I don't have to bother with you again? And won't you please call off this bloody storm?"

Anti-Wanda shook her head. "Sorry. I mean that- I really am sorry. I know you're new to this whole medium thing now that you finally got tied with Sunnie, but that's not how bein' a representative for the nature spirits works. Storms ain't just gonna go away with a snap a' my fingers or a wave a' my wand. My mood don't control the weather." She gestured towards the pregnant clouds. "My bad mood hurts Munn's feelings, and _he_ controls the weather. And there's rain and ice this time instead a' just wind 'cuz you've got Sunnie riled up now. I brought the winds ta this party, but I ain't the one who made the rain."

Anti-Cosmo brought his hand to his mouth and sunk his teeth into his sleeve. He didn't have an umbrella, and in this state none of the mixed crowd of nobility and construction workers were brave enough to dash forward and offer him one. His wings, soaked and made useless by the weather, flapped wildly against his back, but his heels stayed firmly planted in the mucky puddles. He flared a finger in Anti-Wanda's direction. "This ought to be taken to roost. You. Bring me to the person I have to snog to get this crystal roof up before midnight. Post-haste, now!"

His furious phrasing brought her pause for a second, and she tilted her head. "Actually, technically that's me. But no matter how many kisses ya hit me with, I ain't giving my stamp of okay on this one. This roof design is dumb, and we need ta scrap it all and start over."

As Anti-Cosmo's face twisted with rage, the chunks of falling hail grew larger. His hand moved to his left hip, although he didn't break eye contact. With a _shiing!_ of pumice and glazed ceramic scratching against silver, he unsheathed his battered wand and whipped around. A beam of bright blue exploded from the tip and vaporized a leaf that happened to be drifting by at that precise moment. The ashes fell clump by clump in a heap before being washed away.

"Nice shot, champ," Anti-Wanda said, pocketing her hands. No one else was saying anything. Leaving Anti-Juandissimo with the umbrella, she walked over to Anti-Cosmo, her boots squishing with every step, and glanced into the sky. No lightning. 'Course not. Chances were, Munn was arguing with Sunnie on Plane 23, and didn't have time to go bother Saturn right now and add fire to the mix. "Hey, High Count, it's needles out here. This storm prob'ly ain't gonna stop 'til we come to an agreement. When you wanna talk about this, come find me inside."

His head twitched towards her. His hand remained extended, wand simmering at the transmitting tip. "Needles, you say?"

"Yeah, outside."

"Oh," he realized. "The falling rain feels like needles." He leaned back his head. "You know, I suppose it does."

"I'm goin' somewhere dry," she reminded him. Anti-Cosmo smacked himself in the temple.

"You're right, you're right. Do forgive me, I pray, for losing my temper like this. I've been upright too long. That, and this dreary weather is driving me mad. Water rinses off pheromones, you know." He tossed his wand from his right hand to his left and pressed it to his forehead. His free hand continued to make rolling gestures. "Anti-Wanda, I know the proper protocol for arguments such as this one is to take it to roost and sort out the matter sociosexually, but as you may recall, I've chosen to abstain from such a practice at this time. But surely there's some way we can contribute equally and reach an agreement here? Something a mite less… invasive?"

Anti-Wanda shrugged, keeping her hands in her pockets. "Well. Anti-Juandissimo and I are goin' home. Fetch us when ya got it." Anti-Cosmo didn't respond, so she walked back to join her boyfriend. Nudging him with her wing, she said, "C'mon. Let's split."

Anti-Juandissimo brought his arm around her waist. His lips touched her forehead. "He is not worth your time, _ma grande amie_. You are a radiant flower, and are meant to bow to no prickly fiend such as him."

She leaned her cheek against his shoulder. "Yeah, I know. Tell me again, though."

"The radiant beauty of your chin-"

"Wait! No, you crew can leave. I'll take care of this on my own. Anti-Wanda, wait!"

She twisted halfway around to find Anti-Cosmo sprinting after them, one hand outstretched. When he reached her, he grabbed her forearm and wrenched her almost out from beneath the security of Anti-Juandissimo's umbrella. "Whoa," she protested, digging in her heels.

"Anti-Wanda, Anti-Wanda! Listen. Listen to me. I don't understand how to be a good medium for my people." Anti-Cosmo stared at her, bright green eyes the size of pasta dishes. They glowed even more vividly in this gray weather. His grip squeezed tighter. "But you do. You're the only one from the former camarilla court who dared join me in my quest to overthrow Anti-Bryndin, and look at where that got you. Oh, I'm such a fool. An utter buffoon! Why, you have experience bonding with Munn. Could you teach me how to manage my erratic emotions where Sunnie is concerned?"

"Uh…" She glanced sideways at Anti-Juandissimo. He removed his hand from her waist instantly and took half a step back, his usual cowardice flaring up as soon as Anti-Cosmo entered the scene. Anti-Cosmo himself didn't seem to notice. His puppy-dog look was one of genuine hope. "You wanna… hit the market for some… bread or… something nice? Buy some and…" She made a diving motion with her arm to encompass everything between "feeding ducks" and "lying on the rocks devouring entire loaves like the savages we are."

Curiously, Anti-Cosmo didn't appear at all perturbed by her suggestion. He nodded with bubbly enthusiasm. "That would be delightful. We can go immediately to market, can't we?"

Anti-Wanda glanced at Anti-Juandissimo again. "I mean, I guess? Are you okay with that, hon?"

The rain was suddenly very loud. Anti-Juandissimo's arm wrapped her waist again. Carefully, still holding the umbrella, he took her other hand and pulled her gently around. When they made eye-contact, he leaned in and kissed her softly, deeply. It was a simple thing, but it lingered long enough to make Anti-Cosmo visibly uncomfortable, which presumably had been the point. Anti-Wanda started to ease away, and Anti-Juandissimo let her go. He drew back a step, clutching the umbrella handle in both hands.

"Now," he said, tipping up his chin, "I am okay with it. You go have a nice time with the High Count."

"You don't wanna come?" she asked.

"No, I will be all right. I will see you later. At roost, perhaps." He emphasized _roost_. Anti-Juandissimo bobbed his head, turned, and limped away down the street. Anti-Wanda blinked after him. Then she shook her head. With a twirl of her wand, she formed her own black umbrella out of pure magic. Its pattern mimicked overlapping leaves, and Anti-Wanda opened it there on the street, wondering half-heartedly if she should have run inside to do so instead. That was bad luck, you know. Setting it to her shoulder, she gave it a twirl. It chased interesting shadows across the puddles full of starlight and magic glitter. Not bad for an item she rarely had a reason to practice _anti-poof_ ing up.

Anti-Cosmo clicked his tongue. "Oh, pish posh. You don't need that. Here, good woman. Allow me." Like her, he spun his wand, but didn't get the pattern right. The new umbrella turned to smoke in his hands the second it formed. Anti-Wanda restrained her snort. She could practically feel Anti-Cosmo flushing, but he reevaluated the way he held his wand and tried again. Say one thing for the guy- he weren't nothing if not persistent.

On his fourth try, he proved successful in crafting a green one. When he raised his head, his smile was so broad that his fangs showed to the gums. Anti-Wanda started slightly. Oh, yeah. Anti-Cosmo may be short in height with nerdy-thin shoulders, but when it came to fangs, he was _big_. Those pointy devils were curved, not straight like Anti-Juandissimo's, or flat like hers. After flicking his hand from his chest to his knees in a limited attempt to brush some of the wetness from his clothes, he offered her the umbrella handle.

"Care to join me on this walk, darling?"

"No thanks." Anti-Wanda hopped off the sidewalk into the street and splashed past him. "You keep it. I gots my own, and I wanna run it through the test."

The market lay on the far side of the city, and they had to pass through the upper-class district of manor houses and chic restaurants hawking exotic meals from other planets in order to get there. Privately, she dreaded the thought of Anti-Cosmo yanking her inside one now that she had her mind set on buying bread. What did that mean for her counterpart? Did Wanda Prime thrive on the spontaneous excitement of last-minute plan changes, and dates in unexpected restaurants where no reservations had been made in advance? Hmm. To each her own. Anti-Wanda couldn't see the appeal herself. She was a traveler in her blood, and while she could admit that there was a certain appeal in letting loose, there were days when the instinct to be a tourist and see the stereotypical landmarks of Earth and Fairy World won over the possibility of enjoying the sunset from a rooftop with some random new friends she'd just met.

Not that this was a date. She did have a swell boyfriend, of course. She and her boss were meeting to discuss a matter of business.

"Ffffffffffffffffff…" With the sound of a deflating balloon hissing between his fangs, Anti-Cosmo bolted up the street after her. His clumsy feet kept slipping on the slick cloudstones, his damp wings slapping against his back. Eventually, he fell into step beside her as near as their bumping umbrellas allowed them to get. "Goodness, this rain is atrocious," he observed, whipping his handkerchief from the chest pocket of his coat. He pressed it to his monocle without taking the thing from his eye. "I say, some lout must have _really_ ticked Sunnie off this morning, you know what I mean?" When she didn't answer, he prompted, "Prince Sunday? Nature spirit of Water? I was born in his year on the zodiac, you know."

"I know."

"Yes." Returning the handkerchief to its proper place, he looked off in the opposite direction. "I thought you might. And you know, I'm so terribly sorry for yelling at you that way. That was vastly unbecoming of me and the image I desire to project."

Anti-Wanda nodded. Anti-Cosmo glanced at her curiously, but she refused to humor him even when his gaze lingered on her cheek and began to slide down her neck to her collarbone. He made a show of waiting for her at each puddle in case the opportunity to engage in the gentlemanly gesture of lying down his coat for her to walk on should present itself. She made a show of jumping into each one and splattering his socks with muck.

"My sis lives in a manor 'round these parts now." She had no idea why she told him that. It just seemed like the type of thing a damsel was supposed to talk about when walking in the rain with a conversational drake. "Colony life weren't really her thing."

"I befriended her counterpart during my time at the Academy," Anti-Cosmo said absently.

"What's she like?"

"Oh… Dangerous. Powerful. Passionate."

Anti-Wanda checked over her shoulder. "Huh?"

He stopped walking. His hand clenched the umbrella hook. "Oh. Er, she performs at amphitheatres all throughout Fairy World. At least, I think that's how it typically goes. Her views regarding Anti-Fairies are really quite fascinating. Perhaps I could introduce you sometime, hmm?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that." After pausing beneath a signpost for ? minutes (Longer than she would have liked, whatever the number was), Anti-Wanda turned their direction down another street. The buildings were shorter here, and the ground sloped steeply down to the center of the crater that held the city Luna's Landing. Rainwater sucked and slurped at their feet with every step. It was still raining, despite her and Anti-Cosmo's hasty attempt at patching relations up between them. Anti-Wanda stopped next to a small luminescent tree on one side of the path. Leaning her shoulder against the trunk, she pulled off her shoe and dumped a puddle out. "She famous at acting yet? Fairy-Wendy?"

"She calls herself Blonda on the stage, actually." Anti-Cosmo made a swirling motion to suggest the styled curls at the front of her hair that mimicked Anti-Wanda's own. "Because she dyes her hair pale yellow."

Anti-Wanda thought about that for a minute. After slipping her shoe on again, she asked, "What color is my countypart's hair?"

"Dusky brown, actually. She dyes it fuschia pink."

"What's so bad about brown?"

"Perhaps she likes pink."

"That ain't a good reason to dye your hair that color," Anti-Wanda grumbled. Her foot came down on the sidewalk again, next to a crack that she avoided deliberately. "What'd her family say about it?"

No response. Anti-Wanda turned to find Anti-Cosmo staring at her, the fur around his neck gradually beginning to puff up. The way his emerald gaze seared the back of her skull made her stomach churn with shadowy butterflies. "I like pink," he whispered. "I didn't use to. But I actually think I like it now. It's a lovely color, actually. Very strong."

Uhhh… He probably could have found a better time to say that than when he was gazing right at her pink eyes. Anti-Wanda edged away. Turning swiftly on her heels, she walked towards the market at a brisk pace. She pulled the flared collar of her sky-blue jacket high, and kept her umbrella low. Nutcase. Was that supposed to be a pick-up line, or had he not even realized his comment could be taken like that? Either way, he'd better not get any ideas. Sure, commitment was a fickle mistress in Anti-Fairy culture, but she still wasn't interested in sneaking around behind her boyfriend's back. Not one lick.

When the market came into view up ahead, they found the stall owners competing for customers by maintaining magical domes around their general area. Some had even teamed up so even the path between them was shaded. The pair wandered for a few minutes, investigating the warm foods offered by vendors who hadn't decided to call it quits and head home. They found the bakery had taken charge of shielding three wireframe tables and half a dozen chairs from the rain. Upon stepping beneath its pale purple dome, and after accepting the usual greeting of "Most honored, Esteemed High Count" from Anti-Nixon, Anti-Wanda collapsed her umbrella into smoke. Anti-Cosmo hung his on his wrist by the hook so he wouldn't need to recreate it later. "I do believe Sunnie is feeling better already," he said cheerily. "Perhaps this rain will lighten before we even so much as- Oh, my gods." His hand slapped over his mouth. Then his eyes shot aimlessly into the sky. "Um… Mm."

"S'matter?"

"Anti-Wanda, there's no easy way to say this, but you may wish to… You have a little…" His fingers flicked vaguely at her shirt, eyes still averted. "Right there."

What did he-?

Oh. She'd been out in the rain wearing a lightly-colored shirt. Aw, crud. Anti-Wanda waved her wand, drying the fabric instantly. The creases turned crispy, and she almost swore the size shrank along with it. But, at least it was dry. She tugged the hem down around her hips.

"Why'd ya look?" she asked.

"Wasn't," he mumbled around his fingers. "Accident."

"You weren't lookin', or it weren't an accident?"

He kept his stubborn face tilted back, puffing his cheeks. One of his feet, though up to the ankles in undrained water, started to tap. "Don't do this to me, darling. You know exactly what I mean."

"So you was looking?" she asked innocently.

"Don't play dumb, woman. We both know you're smarter than that."

"Ain't dumb. I's just playing coy. It's what I do."

"Are you thoroughly decent now?" he demanded, still tapping.

"I fixed it." Anti-Wanda jabbed her thumb at the lone server behind the makeshift bakery. Technically there were other bakeries with actual walls and ceilings, and technically there were other vendors around the market who sold bread and things, but everyone knew Anti-Nixon. He grew all his ingredients in one of the few plots of Anti-Fairy World that still received chunks of warm sunlight for most of the year. Nothing was artificially _poof_ ed up, nothing was imported from across the border, and he always took tender care of the ground. "Whatcha gonna get here?"

"Hmm…" Anti-Cosmo's gaze trailed across the blackboards leaning against the crates that made up the front of the Anti-Nixon's stall. A smooth glass case topped the crates, shielding goodies from grabby hands but not from adoring eyes. "You know, I'm not quite sure. What do you suggest?"

Anti-Wanda checked the menu too, trying to find something that sounded appetizing to her cold, empty stomach. Finally her eyes settled on the bottom. "Cake."

She fully expected Anti-Cosmo to shoot her a strange stare. Probably argue with her, perhaps laugh at her. Instead, he tapped one claw against his chin. "It _is_ a rather dreary day out, isn't it? Logically, such gloomy weather ought to prompt us to fill the void in our souls with enjoyable sweets. Perhaps I'll have myself a slice of cake too. It's a pastry of some kind, isn't it? What does it taste like?"

"It's…" Anti-Wanda turned her head. "What? It's cake. You know cake. With frosting. Pixies make it. That's why there's birthday cakes. The Head Pixie invented birthday cake. He gave me samples at the Sky Temple when we was partying. Didn'tya eat cake with your litter when y'all turned 150,000? Everyone eats up cake all the time."

Anti-Cosmo's attention veered to the floor. He scratched at his cheek. "Yes, well. You've met my mother, I believe. Wasting money to commemorate my legal adulthood wasn't an option."

"You really ain't never had cake, for reals," she said, touching her lips. "But… I thought you was a noble? Shouldn't you have got stuff?"

"I also raised a genie or two," he pointed out with a bitter edge to his voice, "and as you can see, I'm certainly not drowning in cake on that end either."

Anti-Wanda turned to Anti-Nixon, waiting patiently behind the bakery counter for them to come to a decision. "We'll have two cakes, thank you nice."

Anti-Nixon's eyes expanded. "Two whole cakes? Uhh… I don't know if I can… I mean, yes to him, he's High Count, but I think I'm going to need to see some I.D. for you."

"Slices," Anti-Cosmo corrected, holding up two fingers.

"Oh, thank Rhoswen. That's fine, then. What flavors?"

Anti-Cosmo looked again at Anti-Wanda to take the lead, like he'd never visited a market stall that offered more than one standard product before. "Toffee crunch for me," she said. "And… somethin' nice, but light and not too fluffy for my friend. He's a first-timer."

"Apple-cinnamon it is."

"Not that one," Anti-Cosmo blurted. When they both looked at him, Anti-Nixon with his knife high, Anti-Cosmo made a repeated throat-cutting gesture with his hand. "No cinnamon, please. Vanilla will be fine."

Anti-Nixon bobbed his head. "One toffee crunch, one vanilla. And how do you want the payment to be made?"

"Separate," Anti-Wanda said, at the same time Anti-Cosmo said, "I'll cover it." They exchanged a look. He already had his High Count stamp and green ink pad halfway out of his pocket. Rain dripped from the awning in a steady stream behind him. The horizon, normally a beautiful swirl of red and orange where Luna's Landing ended and the solid island traded itself for open sky, had become a mass of black clouds. They framed Anti-Cosmo's face in a strange way that made it difficult to pin down his mood as disgruntled, or startled. Her pride slightly injured, but her reluctance to irritate her new boss stronger, Anti-Wanda tilted her head. "I guess he's buying the cake."

Anti-Nixon handed two plates and two spoons over his makeshift counter. "These are dissolvable," he said. "Just run them under cold water when you're finished and they'll turn to smoke. Of course, it looks like that's especially easy today."

"It's a triangle pastry," Anti-Cosmo said when he took his slice, sounding thrilled with this discovery.

"Yeah," she said, looking at him.

They moved aside to a wireframe table with two chairs. Anti-Cosmo took hers and pulled it out for her. Anti-Wanda sat and allowed him to push it in. After he took his own seat, she said, "So? Whatcha wanna know about bein' a medium?"

"Well, everything, preferably." Anti-Cosmo bent forward over the table, brushing his claws through his hair. "I really jumped on this wagon hardly understanding what I was getting into."

Anti-Wanda watched him for a second, then carefully took his plate and moved it to the side. That should keep any dandruff or stray hairs from falling in until he completed his nervous self-preening. "Yeah. Hey, try the cake."

His first bite was tentative, his chewing very slow. But as he swallowed, his pupils widened. "What… is this?"

Unable to suppress her snickers, Anti-Wanda shook her head. "Good, huh?"

He took another spoonful, but let it hover in front of his lips while he stared at her. "You know, I have a policy of abstaining from sugar in large amounts. I may have to make an exception for cake."

"And that's just vanilla."

"I suppose it is."

While he ate, Anti-Wanda cut off a small chunk of hers with her spoon. She reached out towards his plate. "Here. Try the toffee crunch."

Instead of pushing his plate forward like a sane person so she could reach, Anti-Cosmo looked curiously at the spoon for about half a second, then darted out his tongue. Anti-Wanda flinched. Too late. The bite disappeared, leaving her spoon a little more contaminated with his saliva than she'd wanted. Oh well. High Count privileges.

"I should have gotten toffee crunch," Anti-Cosmo mused. Anti-Wanda glanced up from the spoon she'd started to rub with the hem of her shirt.

"I ain't sharing anymore."

"Cruel woman."

"Greedy scumball."

Anti-Cosmo poked out the tip of his tongue at her. There was still a chocolate crumb or two clinging to his taste buds. Leaning his chin on his hand, elbow planted on the table, he drew a circle in the air around her face with his spoon. "Foul temptress."

"Big know-it-all."

"Thoughtless dunce."

"Peachy marshmallow."

"Butterheaded twit."

"Petal-tongued snatter."

Anti-Cosmo blinked. Anti-Wanda's smirk faded. The rain plinked down on the purple dome above them as the silence stretched longer. Thunder stirred in the distance. Then he placed his fingertips to his chest. "I'm offended."

"Yeeeaaah, I took it too far with that word. Sorry, High Count. Uh." She adjusted her plate. "Anti-Nixon bakes real nice goodies, but s'not as good as Pixie cake."

"What does Pixie cake taste like, pray tell?"

"It's…" Anti-Wanda tapped her claws on the table. They kept disappearing into the wireframe holes. "Okay. Next time it's a Love year and we have the seven festivals 'round the Castle grounds, you _gots_ ta promise you'll let me show you around. The Pixies always have a cake booth."

His forehead crinkled. "I've never seen it."

"You prob'ly weren't lookin' in the right place."

Anti-Cosmo narrowed his eyes. "If H.P. set up a cake booth in Anti-Fairy World every seven years, I would know."

The veiled threat underlying his tone brought her pause, but only for a second. Anti-Wanda shrugged. "I know you'll proba'ly be way busy during the festivals, but I hope ya come find me anyway. I'll take ya 'round, and I'll buy ya any a' the cupcakes ya want."

"I'm quite bothered I didn't know this was a thing," he muttered. He poked his cake again with his spoon. "This seems like something H.P. would have felt inclined to mention while I was rebuilding the Water Temple in Pixie World."

"Heh heh. Guess that means I'm a better friend to ya than the Head Pixie is, don't it?"

"About the nature spirits," he said.

"Huh?"

The handkerchief came out of his pocket, and the monocle came off his face. "My understanding is that being a medium is a personal thing which each medium and nature spirit need to work out on their own as they grow more familiar with one another over the years. It isn't as though there's some sort of handbook I might devour in order to learn the secrets of the universe. But I don't have time for this. Tell me what all I need to know so I might be a good High Count for my people."

"Uhhhh…" Anti-Wanda rolled her eyes. "I dunno. There's kind of a lot a' stuff about it, and we've only got the two slices a' cake, so…"

Anti-Cosmo's claw went up. "How do we make the rain stop? Let's begin there."

"We can't."

"Who can if not us? _We_ channel the nature spirits who embody Water and Sky."

Hmm. Anti-Wanda thought for a few seconds, which was at least two seconds longer than she wanted to bother with. After eating another bite of cake, she said, "Whatcha know about the Prince of Water?"

Anti-Cosmo didn't answer at first. He traced a circle on his leg with one claw. For a moment, Anti-Wanda wondered if she'd insulted his intelligence, and if his pride was going to prompt him to refuse her. Then he said, "The Prince of Water is bound to the idea of the Water Temple. While bound, he can perceive little but his Temple, and the rest of the universe remains a great white void for him. His destructive tendencies are kept at least somewhat restrained. However, the golden chains which tie him to his Temple are endless. He can drift away from the Temple, far across what appears to be a blank void in his mind, and even encounter other nature spirits. Particularly the Prince of Soil, of course."

"Mmhm." She gestured towards the dark clouds overhead. "Or the Prince a' Sky, as the case might be sometimes, ayup."

"Yes. Also, the Prince of Water can create small manifestations of himself to occupy his echo chamber in the Water Temple in a way which mortals can understand. It was with one such manifestation that I, um…" He drew an X on his left hand.

"Kiff-tied with Sunnie, yeah." She sat back. "But you're interestin'. You got ta see the Prince of Water himself, didn't ya? When the Head Pixie knocked the Temple down, I mean."

"I suppose."

He didn't seem inclined to disclose details. Maybe another day.

"And how's it feel now that you and Sunnie did the thing? It's different, right?"

"Like…" Anti-Cosmo placed his hands to his chest and moved them up and down his torso. "I feel… very aware of myself, all the time. I suppose it's the way I would feel if I were pregnant. I'm suddenly sensitive to the fact that when I eat, I'm providing nutrients for another besides myself. That when I endure pain, Sunnie is tied to me as though I'm his yoo-doo doll. That when it comes to the feelings in my chest, I can keep no secrets from him. I understand that he can see and hear everything that I do, even if he is a step removed from it all. I have no privacy, and yet… I chose to accept that fate. For him. He's a curious companion. He doesn't speak in my mind with words, although sometimes I can feel his presence, like a cold patch moving about beneath my skin. I know that if he wished to, he could seize control of any part of my body, from my hand to my mouth or even all of me, but only if I were to allow it. I constantly feel a buzz of energy in my blood every minute of every day. It's as though I'm endlessly…" He groped for the word.

"Turned on?" she asked, leaning her knuckles on her cheek.

His eyes squeezed shut. "I wasn't going to say it like _that!_ "

"And you're _suuure_ you don't just feel like that 'cuz I'm sittin' over here being so goshdarn pretty?"

"I- er- That's not- I don't- Why would- I could never- I-" He flushed bright periwinkle. "No! Good smoke, be serious!"

"Relax, High Count. I'm just teasin' ya 'round the mulberry bush a li'l." Anti-Wanda danced her spoon across the table, twirling it and making it jump. "It's like this. Nature spirits get bored being locked up all the time. I mean, it's been what, 900,000 years since the last time Sunnie had a medium?"

"Something like that."

She shrugged. "They get bored. They gotta find ways to stay entertained, so they don't start blowing things up or flooding places or hitting us with famines. Can I tell ya my theory 'bout what's going on, even though it ain't supported by solid fact?"

Anti-Cosmo tipped his head. "I think your perspective would be very interesting to hear. Please, do go on."

"'Kay, so. Basically, there's our zodiac spirits. They's all locked up in their big void, but at least they's got each other for company, right?"

"To the best of my knowledge."

"Pretend there's this… 'jar' of stuff. Papers and stuff. Little ones, like cards that ya fold up tight. Pretend there is."

He nodded.

"Let's say when the nature spirits get bored, they write down puzzles and challenges for each other. It's like a list of stuff to do. We'll call 'em 'tasks'."

He nodded again. Anti-Wanda brought her spoon back to what remained of her cake.

"So each task in this huuuge jar is written on these cards. The zodiac spirits play this game of life so they don't get bored, using mortals as their playing pieces. We've always kinda suspected that, right? Sometimes they drop hints when you talk to them, right?"

"Sunnie may have mentioned something of the kind."

"So there's this cosmic game. To start, all the spirits who are playing draw out, liiike… five or six or seven or something cards to start with from the idea jar. And this jar's way huge. Then the spirits see what's written on the cards they picked, and that's the game. Do the tasks you get." She took another bite. "The hard part's 'cuz everyone's trying ta complete their tasks at the same time everyone else is. Sometimes they fight, but they love each other, so it's fine. Different tasks is worth different point numbers, so the hard ones are more points. You can pick out more cards when you're done with the ones you started with, and the nature spirit who gets the most points when all the cards are gone from the jar wins. Then the spirits start over again. Usually takes them a few centuries to get through a single game. That's what I think."

"That…" Anti-Cosmo leaned his chin on his interlaced fingers. "That's a very interesting theory, Anti-Wanda. You know, I'm always astounded by your fascinating intellect. What sort of tasks do you imagine they might have?"

Anti-Wanda shrugged. "I dunno. I think it's prob'ly mostly stuff like, 'Ten points to the first one who gets three new monuments made in their images.' 'Cuz you know, the spirits can sense images made of them even when stuck up inside their Temples. But there's rules. Like, they can't tell mortals that they're trying to win a game, and that we oughta build monuments so they can win points. That's why they've never told us any of this. But like, they can do little miracles for us and _hope_ we build monuments to thank them. Ooor they can be more lowhanded, I guess? And like, tell someone they'll give 'em a miracle if they build a monument first."

"I'll believe it."

"Yeah. Other tasks gotta be like, 'You get a hundred points if five a' your own guys are in someone else's temple all at the same time' and 'You get twenty points if you have the following fruits in your offering bowl at the same time.' They ain't allowed ta mind control us, though. That's the game. They have to see if mortals do stuff on their own, and they can't tell us direct about it." Anti-Wanda pointed to Anti-Cosmo with her spoon, prompting him to lift his eyebrows. "There's also these point bonuses. Having the High Count or the Countess born in your year gets you bonuses."

"That's understandable."

"And there's negatives too. 'Lose twenty points every time you grant a miracle' and 'Lose ten points when someone leaves your temple without saying a prayer' and 'Lose five points every day one of your followers spends a night in jail' or whatever. That's why they do some a' the weird stuff they do and act all vague a lot a' the time. They can't tell us these things, or they'd lose."

To Anti-Wanda's surprise, Anti-Cosmo ducked his head and began chuckling with amusement. "Oh, my pretty pet. You've really thought this out, haven't you?"

"Best theory I ever heard for why they don't just solve all our problems for us all the time," she pointed out. "The spirits all got their own agendas, High Count. Sometimes they match ours, and sometimes they don't. The spirits ain't mean on purpose, but sometimes they see us like pieces in their game, and they forget we all gots feelings. Sometimes it's hard for them ta not have control over us or what happens in their game, exactly. S'like if you was playing a game a' chess, except with seven players. And y'all got children in your laps who are really the guys moving the pieces. You can't touch the board, and neither can any a' the other grown-ups. Only the kids can, 'cuz your hands are chained behind your back. You can give them hints, but ya can't control what they do, e'en when it's real important and you might lose the game 'cuz of them. And sometimes you get frustrated about it and wanna give up. And it's like this for everyone else playing the game too, all day, all the time. I wanted a' tell you this so you wouldn't be sad if you feel like Sunnie doesn't talk to ya as much as you want. He's got his own thing going on, and maybe he can't tell you 'cuz he doesn't wanna lose the game. You get it?"

His eyes were lower on her shirt than they probably should have been. Had he even heard her? "Uh…" Anti-Wanda waved her hand at him. "High Count?"

Anti-Cosmo shifted his eyes up to hers, though he didn't take his hand from his mouth. "Oh, right. Terribly sorry. I was thinking of… something else."

She decided not to ask, just in case. "Ah. Well. I guess that's it. That's what I wanted ta say. You don't control the nature spirits, or their powers. You're just the guy who lets Sunnie see the world, since they can't see any of these colors or anything when they's locked up in their void like naughty kids grounded to stay inside the house. Any more questions?"

"No, thank you. I'll get in contact with you again if I think any up as the years go along."

"Nice. So we's even for now?"

He brought another spoonful of cake to his mouth. "I do so loathe that word. I don't think in terms of owings and evens, darling. But yes. I suppose… we're even."

"So about that dumb post office roof…"

"I'll give your opinion thorough consideration."

That was probably the most compromise she was going to get out of him today. Anti-Wanda dropped her focus to her own cake again. "Thanks for buying me stuff. Glad we made up about this."

"As am I. Trivial arguments are such silly things."

They waited where they sat ten minutes longer, chasing bits of half-dissolved plates around the table with their spoons. Finally, Anti-Cosmo put an end to that and polished his claws on the provided serviette. "Shame this rain hasn't stopped, though."

Anti-Wanda stared through the purple dome overhead. "Yeah. I mean, maybe Munn and Sunnie ain't mad. Maybe they made it rain 'cuz they were happy. How would you show you were happy if you had nature powers?"

"Possibly they're happy. Maybe they're good friends enjoying a very pleasant lunch date together." His gaze migrated slowly back to her face, where it lingered for a time. Anti-Wanda set down her spoon.

"Why d'ya keep looking at me like that?"

His brow furrowed. "Like what?"

She made an _I have my eyes on you_ gesture with her fingers. Twice.

"Oh, that. Yes. Well." Anti-Cosmo closed his eyes. He let one open hand hover in the air beside his face for a moment. The fingers clenched, knuckles bulging, when he captured the thought he wanted to follow. "You know, I heard it said that our counterparts have become romantically involved over on the other side. They're supposedly beginning courtship. It may progress."

Anti-Wanda raised her eyebrows at him. "It could."

Anti-Cosmo rolled his hand in a weaving gesture, intently focused on his reflection in his tiny serving plate. "So of course, it stands to reason that if their relations were to become physically intimate, that means you and I would eventually have to, um…"

"I reckon we would."

"I've been seeing someone else," he blurted, as though she hadn't attended his wedding. For the first time in a few minutes, he jerked up his head and locked eyes with her. His cheeks burned, snapping with cold magic that made the fur on her arms tingle even from where she sat. "And… there's this child I've been raising. Not mine, exactly, only sort of. That rather complicates things, doesn't it?"

She shrugged. "Things work out."

His hands fell to either side of his plate, and he sat there and looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. Very slowly, as though he'd already planned out their entire future, he shook his head. His nose scrunched up. "I'm sorry. Oh gods, I'm so sorry for what's about to happen to you, Anti-Wanda. I've made a mess of things with my loopy ideas."

"Don't need t'pologize ta me, High Count."

"I should go," he muttered, standing up. Anti-Wanda stood too, plate in hand.

"Walk me back to the Castle at least, ya creep."

He flared his nostrils, but his smile was amused and his eyes were tender. "Such a sassy tongue on you, you dainty pillock."

She rolled her eyes and grabbed the umbrella from him. Popping it open, she said, "Doorknob bucket."

"You're such a dolt sometimes."

"Better dolty than a loonypants."

"Oh, absolutely."

Why… was… he looking at her like that?

Anti-Cosmo stiffened as though his spine had been snapped. He spun around, holding his fingertips to his cheek, and beckoned for her to follow without looking at her, very un-gentlemanlike. "Yes, um, well… Come along, darling. It's not getting any lighter out. Thank Rhoswen it's stopped hailing, at the very least."

He didn't see the clouds break behind him.


	44. (78) First Things First

**A/N** \- What better Prompt to follow "Gentlemanly" than a nature spirit-centered piece? … With preteen zodiac spirits prior the Sealing War and their imprisonment in the cloudland Temples. This piece is pure worldbuilding related to Anti-Fairy zodiac beliefs, so by its _nature,_ there are no* canon characters in it. If you don't care about the nature spirits, you are excused.

* * *

 _Summary:_ With Tarrow the cosmic jellyfish still sulking far away from Heaven, the Cycling Hen strives to comfort his seven sons and prevent them from tearing one another apart in the games they play.

 _Characters:_ Cycling Hen (Life), Reaper of Souls (Death), Prince of Love (Dayfry; Balance; the peacemaker), Prince of Fire (Saturn; Energy; the warrior), Prince of Water (Sunnie; Focus; the scholar), Prince of Sky (Munn; Acceptance; the prankster), Prince of Soil (Twis; Devotion; the merchant), Prince of Breath (Winni; Communication; the teacher), Prince of Leaves (Thurmondo; Curiosity; the inventor), Mother Nature (Space), Tarrow (Reality), assorted clay entities

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ This is the chronologically first piece / "That Was Then"

 _Prerequisites:_ "Gentlemanly". Having some _Frayed Knots_ background would be great. Once the first chapter of _Identity Theft_ has been posted, you may also be interested in cross-referencing.

* * *

 **78\. First Things First** (Billions of years pre-series)

 _Long, long ago, on a plane of existence high, high in the energy field_

* * *

" _Auuuuuuntiiiieeee!"_

The shriek echoed off every rainbow crystal in the cave system, sloshing like a river down a slot canyon. A dozen stalactites burst like bursts, and the stalagmites below them dissolved into chunky puddles. Inside the black and white chicken coop at the end of their twisting tunnel, the **Cycling Hen** tucked her head a bit further under her wing. "Mm. Sunnie must be maturing more quickly than we thought. He actually let us get some rest this morning."

The **Reaper of Souls** clapped his own wing over his face. "If I could wish for one thing, it would be the ability to sleep. I'm so downright drained. Can't he ever want us _before_ I deal with a pandemic instead of immediately after?"

The Hen groped for the great raven with her talons. Finding his beak, she pushed him with her foot. "It's just until **Tarrow** gets over the **Hocus Poconos** and comes home. You know he wouldn't miss Dayfry's coronation for a world."

"He needs to stop stress-eating," the Reaper muttered. He didn't open his eyes. "This is the fifth time he's gone off to devour a galaxy this week. I keep telling him those solar systems will go right to his thighs."

"The break-up with Lady Hocopo was difficult. We need to stay supportive of him. Especially in front of his kids."

"Last time I tried to be supportive of him, I ended up giving him the **Prince of Leaves**. What else does he want from me?"

At the sound of his name, Thurmondo rustled his leafy feathers. They'd turned red for the autumn season. He didn't set down his scrolls. "Go up to the surface if you want to read, dear," the Hen scolded, gathering her weight beneath her. She'd need all her strength when Sunnie dragged her from the coop. "You'll strain your eyes that way."

"I will, Auntie, I will… As soon as I get to the end of this chapter."

"Auntie, come see!" Sunnie shot up the henhouse ramp and flung himself at the Hen's folded wing. Of **Tarrow** 's seven sons, he looked the most like his father, with a lynx-like build of black crystal and four wild arms. That was understandable. Sunnie was a water spirit born of **Tarrow** 's tears, and had no mother to speak of (Refer to **Tarrow** 's break-up with the **Hocus Poconos** ). He was practically an identical copy. Apart from Sunnie's much smaller size, the two visual differences between father and son were the blue eyes in place of red, and the flowing white hair that swept to his ankles instead of clumping around his ears. Their capes were different colors too, of course, with Sunnie's clasped at his neck by a white brooch shaped like a turtle.

When the Hen stirred, the young nature spirit slid off her back. He flailed three hands towards whichever tunnel of the crystal cavern he'd sprinted from. "Auntie! Saturn and Winni say I can't play on Planet Snobulac with them until I claim a medium like theirs. Make them let me play."

The Hen massaged her tear ducts with the flight feathers at the tips of each wing. "Prince Sunday, your father set very clear boundaries before he left. If you wish to play in mortal worlds, you need to find a babysitter."

"But I tried! I tried for six generations." Sunnie stamped his foot. A small geyser burst from the wooden floor. It slowly began to soak the nest and dribble through the floorboards. "The mortals don't like me. Make them like me."

"All right," the Hen mumbled, lifting her tail. She squashed the geyser out with her foot. "I'm coming. I'm coming. Watch the clutch until I get back, dear."

The Reaper rolled over, coating the three planet-sized eggs with his dark feathers and a grunt. The Hen stepped down the henhouse ramp after Sunnie, blinking her eyes at the glow of the crystals beyond the entry curtain. One of these days, she and the Reaper would be able to afford resettling above ground. That was Reaper's goal, anyway. Call her a country spirit, but she didn't care for the heavenly cities as much as he did. He told her it would be easier to find work up there. She could not think of a good argument for that.

The tunnel wasn't nearly as high as it ought to be, only half a dozen planets tall. She had to keep her head ducked to avoid bumping it on any of the dripping stalactites. And on top of that, she had to watch for Sunnie underfoot, too. A task which he did not care to make easy for her with all of his running around like flotsam and jetsam in a current. Sunnie scampered along the glittery tunnel, then came back to wait for her to catch up. His paws splashed in the puddles the splintered stalactites had left behind. Had his long ears grown even longer since yesterday? Was that only yesterday?

"Did you finish your homework?" the Hen asked through a croaking yawn.

"Of course. I always do. I'm the smartest of my brothers. I work hard and do a good job on everything because I don't waste time on gooey emotions and friendship. I don't get why people don't like me. Don't they know I always follow the rules? Both those in real life and those from our games. I'm the best demigod. I'm good, I listen to instructions, I do what I'm supposed to, and I work hard. Everyone should want to take orders from me and not my brothers."

No wonder he was doing so poorly in school.

"Where did you three set up the game?"

"In my temple's bottom tier. Saturn and Winni wanted to use my 'Settlers & Spaceships' edition, and that's why I'm mad at them. It's my game and my room, so it just makes sense that I should get to play."

"I see."

Sunnie hopped up and down on the spot. "Auntie, I learned how to turn a river into a waterfall."

"Did you?"

"Yes! That's why I said it. I found an easier way to do it using erosion from the point down, instead of starting from the river and trying to build a mountain up. I can't wait to show Dad when he comes home." He paused, whiskers quivering. Then he craned his head back as she stepped over him. "When is Dad coming home?"

"Your father must still be busy speaking to the Spirit Bear Council, Sunnie. They were very upset with those genie things that Saturn made. You children know you're not allowed to use the sculpting clay from the Promethean Cliffs without my supervision."

"Saturn was just playing," he protested, seemingly forgetting his former anger at his older brother and snapping automatically to his defense. "I like his genies. I think they're cute. I want to make an eelemental just like his. But mine will be able to swim, of course."

The Hen sighed. "Well, we need to figure out what we're going to do with them. Saturn designed them to be desert-dwelling, and he deliberately made them incredibly sensitive to water thinking it would help them sustain themselves. Unfortunately, too much exposure to wetness will kill them. Not only that, but the amount of iron they require is beyond the options we currently have available around here. The Bears aren't very happy. So until the Bears agree to embody a new planet where the genies can thrive, the genies will have to be placed in a terrarium and monitored intensely. And what we're going to do with that for now is anyone's guess. I suppose we'll have to grant some of the older city souls an internship opportunity, and they can take care of them."

Sunnie sprang onto a cluster of purple gems and poised himself in a crouch. His blue cape fluttered behind him like a pair of wings. "Well, I think that I should be allowed to sculpt with your clay. I'll be good and do it while you're watching me. You let Dayfry sculpt with your clay. He made the succubi people."

"That's because Dayfry is the oldest. He's thoughtful, kind, and incredibly responsible."

"I'm responsible. Auntie, I want to sculpt another lifeform."

"I don't know-"

"Please? I can use the clay you gave me for my temple completion day. I didn't use it yet."

Oh dear. The Hen furrowed her brow. "Sunnie, I gave that to you over six million years ago so you could sculpt a companion animal. You made your turtle."

Sunnie grinned. "I made a very small turtle. I saved some clay for later because I knew that a smart nature spirit always plans ahead. Now it's later."

That was not reassuring. Still, better that he used it up while she was watching than behind her back, she supposed.

After winding for some time through the tunnels, they came at last upon the underground entrance to the Water Temple. The arched entryway was square, emphasized with white pillars that flickered through different colors depending on the glow of the crystals around them. The double doors in the mushroom-shaped archway were wicker. Aquarium tanks of massive sea turtles subbed in for windows. With everything flanked with blue ribbons, flowers, and paper lanterns, there was no mistaking that the nature spirit who claimed the place for his own held an affinity with water. The _NO DEAD SOULS ALLOWED!_ sign on the left door underscored his age.

Once inside, the Hen could finally straighten up to her proper height. The temple stretched (quite literally) into the heavens, its thin spiral stairs winding all the way to the surface level. It had five tiers, though the Hen really wasn't sure what a child needed with all that space.

Currently they stood on the bottom floor. It was squarer than she remembered, with heaps of scrolls piled in bins and along shelves around the corners. Pale blue banners flapped from every wall, the flow of luck in the room balanced appropriately by flower pots and incense sticks. Cushioned pallets arranged like a slithering snake divided the tiled side of the room from the carpeted one. One desk shaped masterfully like a turtle held a globe of assorted clay lifeforms, won in duels over the years and maintained in suspended animation for now. His homework lay tucked in folders and stacked beside it.

Aside from a few half-open game boxes and rule books scattered across the floor, Sunnie took pride in keeping his temple clean and orderly so he could focus best. It looked nice. He may have his selfish moments, but he was a good boy. A stab of envy pierced a place between the Hen's eyes as she swept her gaze around the room. **Tarrow** had withheld no energy when it came to spoiling his kids. All seven elemental temples were much like this one. She and the Reaper, literal embodiments of Life and Death they may be, had worked for their simple chicken coop on their own. If **Tarrow** 's children grew up to be anything like their father, Plane 23 of Existence may not be enough to contain them. Heaven help them then.

Near the snake of cushioned pallets, two young nature spirits lay sprawled on their stomachs. Like Sunnie, their upper halves were lynx-like, thick with jet black crystal and sprinkled with white and purple stars that glittered and twinkled the longer you looked at them. But unlike Sunnie, their forms differed below the waist. Winni lounged among a stack of yellow pillows, fidgeting his tail and the leopard forepaws of his lower half. Saturn's head was tilted to one side. It rested on his hand, the four scaly legs of his lizard body curled in a tangle of heated orange blankets. The great blue cushion was abandoned. Suspended between them was a globe with a vaguely green, swampy tint to its entire surface. Two moons hovered around it, one with a yellow flag stabbed into its brown rock. And below the globe, an enormous surface map had been laid out, its shape as jagged as the peel of a jatican citrus. Both spirits looked up and glared when the two newcomers strolled in.

"See?" Sunnie tugged on the Hen's wing. "They won't let me play."

Winni sat back on his haunches, crossing both sets of his upper arms. "Are you serious? You fetched my mom over this? You big baby."

"It was the best way to get what I want," Sunnie insisted. A gloat crept into his voice. "Now she'll make you let me play."

The Hen yawned and gave her wings a shake. "So, what exactly is going on over here? Couldn't you let Sunnie join in?"

"We did," protested Winni. "He quit."

"No! You stopped me from doing anything!"

"Kids, let Sunnie play too."

Saturn flung out all his hands. "But we just got the major rivers stabilized before the dry season. Sunnie always dries up the rivers when he gets mad."

Sunnie's cape snapped in an imaginary swell of waves. "No I don't!"

"Yeah," Winni butted in, "sometimes he floods everyone with his hurricanes."

"No I don't!"

"Prince Wednesday, Prince Saturday, be nice to your brother."

"Sorry, Mom."

"Sorry, Auntie. But please don't make us restart our game just to play with him. We're 2.7 billion years in."

"My decision remains to be seen." The Hen came around to study the game board and globe from Winni's perspective. From the looks of things, he had three echo points set up already: One on an island, one on a larger landmass, and one tucked away in a valley. That meant three mediums, most likely. The one indicated on the map with the yellow star marker was obviously his favorite. Indeed, six of his character scrolls for her were unrolled around him, pinned open by shards of yellow crystal. He even had a life-sized copy of her resting by his hand, her cloak and tail billowing and her staff raised high. She surveyed her surroundings as though she could really see Sunnie's temple around her. Then she ducked and scampered forward. She bumped into Winni's paw, but continued to run dutifully forward anyway. The Hen adjusted her wings.

"Sunnie, show me where you placed your original echo wagon."

Sunnie pointed to an oasis on the floor mat. " _I_ built it in the desert so people would flock to me when they needed water, but Winni sent his followers to move it to the top of that peak over there and leave it."

"He's the demigod of water, and snow is water," Winni argued back. "I was just helping him."

"The Snobulacs can't live in the snow! They're crocodiles and gators! Now I'm stuck until someone goes up there. They don't even leave me any offerings. Look at Saturn's offerings."

Everyone turned to the heap of gold, gems, and apple cores at Saturn's side. Saturn wrapped an arm and a leg around the pile and pulled it closer to his stomach. One hand picked up the copies of his two mediums, both of whom were wandering aimlessly, and placed them on the tile. "My echo wagon got upgraded into a temple with a firm foundation. I focused on the freshwater Snobulacs in the swamp. Winni has more than I do. He built along the coast where the saltwater people live. He has an island, and he gets tourists to visit him like crazy."

"And I was in the desert with the big river until you moved me where no one ever goes!"

The **Cycling Hen** nodded, tucking her feet beneath her. She settled between Winni's stack of pillows and Sunnie, who remained standing. "Saturn, your fire powers will keep the Snobulacs warm even in the snow. Will you send some of your followers up the mountain and bring Sunnie's wagon back down?"

Saturn shook his head. "I can't do that. Winni's the one who put it up there. If I bring it down, his followers might want to start a war with mine for going against his medium's instructions. They think she's a prophetess."

"I can't do it either," Winni said. "Half my followers are already threatening to break up with my main half and form another sect. Having my medium tell them I changed my mind about the grueling journey that almost got my general and his troops killed might push them over the edge."

Sunnie pointed at his covered wagon. In this case, it wasn't covered only by a tarp, but also by a layer of snow. The only reason the Hen could recognize it on the mountain was because of the glowing blue arrow gently bobbing up and down above it. "I'm stuck because the sentient species of this world goes into dormancy when they get too cold. I want to skip my turns for the next three millennia so I can turn back the play clock and evolve a new subspecies that can withstand the snow, but Winni and Saturn complained about it even though it's in the rules that I can do this."

Saturn slid one clawed hand from his cheek to his forehead. "Because he's so bad at integrating. I'd be fine with letting him introduce a new subspecies to this world a few thousand years ago if he would keep them in the mountain until he's done fleshing them out and they develop an actual culture with strengths and weaknesses. But as soon as he evolves them up to the current timeline, he'll realize he doesn't have a reliable food source that can sustain multiple generations. He'll try to waltz them down the mountain, and they'll go straight into my swamp. Then my people will wipe them out because I'm more advanced, and he'll cry, and then my swamp water will dry up. It's not my fault."

"I don't want to be on the mountain. I want to be in the desert. Everyone in the desert needs me, and they love me."

The Hen tilted her head. "Well, Sunnie, that's the game. Winni and Saturn didn't do anything wrong."

"But I actually want to play! Not just sit here doing nothing. Shouldn't I be allowed to use my gifts to look after and bless the mortals? They're stopping me from helping people. And what about the few followers I actually do have? I can't answer their prayers if they don't pray near my wagon, but they don't know that. If this goes on, they'll be mad at me and call me names." His hands went to his mouth. "They'll create statues specifically to deface me. They'll spread bad myths and rumors about me. It'll go on my permanent record at school, and I'll fail every class for sure. It would also negatively impact my self-esteem. Are you going to let that happen to me?"

Winni looked away. "I guess he can turn back the play clock. But only if he doesn't complain anymore."

"You know he will," Saturn muttered.

Sunnie picked up one of the rule books lying on his cushion. "The subspecies I make is going to be able to survive in the snow. Let me look up how to do this so I can make sure it's right. First, I'm going to need a new species sheet."

The Hen stayed to watch as the young nature spirits went through the motions of their worldbuilding. Winni and Saturn were good sports about it, even if they drummed their fingers on their thighs the whole time. She'd never been much interested in this sort of thing herself, maybe because she'd grown up without such games and it was only in recent years that her parents had brought them into existence. If nothing else, at least the youths were sticklers for following their own self-imposed rules, even if they hated it. That could prove to be useful someday.

Sunnie finished adding his new subspecies to the game, allowing Saturn to pick up from the present timeline. Thousands of years after their creation, the mountain-dwelling subspecies were doing decently for themselves. They'd become a sentient people. They'd settled down, built several lodges - including a library - and had grown into effective hunters. Their villages were thriving. Saturn held the dice to his chest.

"Please be double fours, please be double fours." He threw them, and they clattered beside the board. One knocked over one of his life-sized medium models, who didn't seem to notice. "Ha! Spider eyes!"

Sunnie squinted. "What are you doing?"

"You'll see. For my blessing phase, I'm going to give the snow subspecies fire." Saturn picked a blessing token out of the game box, and it appropriately shifted into a small flame. He placed it on the game board's mountain and nodded in satisfaction. "Then for my action phase, I'm going to burn the woods. And for my miracle phase, I'm going to spare the village."

"What?" Sunnie clapped his hands to his cheeks. "Hey, no! Stop it! I need them to like me more so they'll upgrade my wagon!"

Winni scooped up the dice and held them out to Saturn again. "If 2 is either the sum or difference of what you roll, then the majority of the villagers will attribute their survival to you, and erect a monument outside the library in your name."

"Let's hope I don't total 6 again."

Sunnie shook his head, his long hair swishing like a flag. "Don't. Take the base conversion bonus instead."

Saturn rolled the dice. He came up with a six and a four.

"Yes! And since we have a three-medium maximum for this game, it should be just a few turns before I convince one of the snow subspecies to take my third favor. Then I can build my forts along the mountains and start coming for that fishing village of yours from both sides, Winni."

"Stop it!"

"And finally, for my play clock phase, let's see how many years pass between my turn and yours."

"No fair!" Sunnie sprang to his feet and kicked the mountain on the game board. This triggered an avalanche, which crashed towards the uppermost village and smothered everyone. Tiny lights pinged into existence along the floating globe, beeping in distress. It wouldn't be long now before word of what had just happened spread to the neighboring towns. A floating scroll burst into existence overhead, unraveling itself, listing the names of everyone injured in the crisis and the urgency of their situation. Winni grabbed for the dice, ready to start down the list in an attempt to roll survivor status for as many Snobulacs as he could. Saturn clenched his miracle spare tokens in his fist. Sunnie stalked from his room back out to the crystal tunnel, fuming and tracking puddles in his wake. Sighing just once, the **Cycling Hen** rose to her feet and padded her way after him.

"Sunnie-"

"Don't talk to me! You always take their side anyway. Especially Winni's because he's actually yours."

The Hen's feathers prickled, but she pressed on. "You know it isn't fun for your brothers to play with you when you snap at them like this. You'll ruin the game for them. Sunnie, I know you're hurting, but don't let your temper get the best of you. Remember your tranquility lessons in school." Nature spirits were _required_ to take three hours of tranquility lessons a day in school. Five if they dealt with mortals on a regular basis. Learning to control one's powers came second to learning to control one's anger.

Sunnie shoved his fist across his eyes. Twice. Then he turned around. He had to back away to see her face, his tiny body skittering among the crystals. He looked so small, so black, like a wispy shadow that would disappear into the depths of the cave as soon as the Hen took the time to blink. "I'm just tired of losing every time I play. Even in the other games, none of the mortals ever want to take my favor. Everyone else gets to have fun with their mediums, and their mediums actually listen to them, and let them inhabit their bodies and stuff. I really, _really_ want a medium. I'll take absolutely anyone. Even if they hate me!"

"You don't want your medium to hate you," the Hen sighed. She brought her wing forward and slid her feathers behind the back of Sunnie's head. "Your medium is someone who is always there for you. They can guide you through an unfamiliar culture on an unfamiliar planet. They can be a friend. A teacher." A buffer between an innocent world and a neurotic spirit child who had nearly come into his full powers, even if he hadn't yet come into full maturity.

"I don't care about the loyalty bonus. Mediums only last for a few turns anyway before they die and you have to train a new one." Sunnie clenched his fists. "I just want to play with one. I _never_ get to take a medium. Even when I do, they never want to listen to anything I say, and everyone else who's playing just targets them for no reason. Or their people in the game just target my medium even when no one tells them to. They just don't like me. By this point, I'm starting to think only an absolute _idiot_ could ever be tricked into taking my favor."

The Hen tapped her claws against the stones. "Maybe the next time you play, you should focus on building up your temple. The more loyalty you have, the more likely your mediums are to listen to you, and the more abilities you can unlock. Loyalty is built over generations. Take your time to strategize early on. Establish your presence and gather your followers. _Then_ you can move beyond your starter village."

"I try! But I never get to start in the places with the best resources. No one brings me offerings when they can't feed their own families."

The Hen was beginning to see where this was going. She withdrew her wing. "Hmm… You know, Dayfry always seems to gather followers and collect offerings even when he has to start his echo wagon in unfavorable locations. Let's ask him for advice. Maybe he can help."

"Okay," Sunnie muttered. He kicked a pink crystal near his foot, but followed her anyway.

They heard the two voices while they were still an entire twist of the tunnel away. From the sound of it, **Mother Nature** had actually decided to grace one of her grandchildren with her presence when requested. The Hen could just imagine the tiny purple hummingbird zipping around her mother's head, trying to study one of his many game globes from a slightly different perspective every few wingbeats.

"And that's how it works, Dayfry. Does that make more sense now?"

"Oh, yes! Thank you, Grandmother. You're really good at this game."

"Of course. Sweetie, your grandfather and I _invented_ this game."

"Still, you're really good. Thanks."

The Hen lifted the translucent purple curtain that marked Dayfry's underground entrance to his temple. When Sunnie made no move to enter, she bent her neck and nudged him forward. "Go on. Ask him if you can join in."

Sunnie dug his feet into the ground. "Can't you ask him? I don't want him to know I quit the other game."

"He's your brother, Sunnie. He'll gladly help you if you ask."

"Okay." He went inside to join his brother and grandmother, albeit slowly. His cape flapped pathetically at his heels, no longer billowing. **Mother Nature** turned her head. Sunnie cringed, and didn't lift his eyes. "U-um. Dayfry? I want some advice. Can you teach me the best way to get a medium?"

Dayfry swooped towards the floor. With a _kiff_ of steam, he morphed from a hummingbird back into his usual half-and-half demigod self. "Of course. I've been working on a world for a while that I've really wanted to show someone. It's your lucky day."

As much as she tried not to, the **Cycling Hen** couldn't help but wince when Dayfry pulled himself together again. Of all **Tarrow** 's children, reckless and stubborn they may be, Dayfry was the one who unnerved the older generation of nature spirits the most. Why wouldn't he? His entire existence was an anomaly. He'd been born when Reality and Unreality for one brief instant had brushed; his mother was the **Hocus Poconos**. His shape mimicked **Tarrow** 's, largely bipedal and lynx-like, but instead of a body composed of black crystal, his was white. Just like his mother. It was that and those crimson antlers that sent imaginary mites crawling up and down beneath the Hen's wings.

Dayfry was a spirit of Love, yes. He held mastery over loyalty, gentleness, and honor, sure. But like his mother before him, he tended towards obsession when at his worst. He strove for peace between his siblings, even forcefully at times when it seemed the only way. It wouldn't take much pressure from his brothers to prompt him into taking on the role of conqueror, prepared to storm the cities of Plane 23 and level them in a deluded quest for equality or justice or rights.

 **Tarrow** adored him. Literally translated, Dayfry's name meant _Mutual gift of_ _special love,_ and **Tarrow** made a point of reminding everyone. He doted on his firstborn more than any of his other sons, which did nothing to quell the jealousy of Dayfry's younger siblings in the Hen's eyes.

But _fry_ seemed such an odd suffix to add on to his name. As far as the Hen knew, the **Hocus Poconos** lacked the ability to show even the slightest affection for anyone. More animal than sentient, she embodied Unreality. She was a force, a duty, driven by hard and unrelenting logic just as **Tarrow** flew through life with emotion guiding all his spontaneous passions. **Tarrow** bumping into her as he wandered the universe had been an accident, a passing fling. They had kiff-tied out of curiosity and promptly gone their own ways after coming apart again, leaving **Tarrow** \- for once in his grandiose life - the submissive spirit who carried the resulting baby to its brief term. Call her old-fashioned, but to the Hen, it didn't sound like much of a mutual gift then, if the **Hocus Poconos** hadn't even lingered thirty more seconds to see her baby be born.

Dayfry was a sparkling child. His mother's colors were strictly cold and monochrome, but Dayfry was multicolored and shimmering. Bubbly and full of life. While his color may be white, from a certain angle it appeared almost transparent, displaying the rainbows running in his veins. He smiled once at the Hen, thin-lipped, eyes wide, before reaching out to take one of Sunnie's hands.

As he and Sunnie went off together, **Mother Nature** turned towards the temple entrance. Her sacred animal was the swan, though she rarely looked it. At least she had the color down. She was always experimenting with random features she'd granted to completely different animals. Today her lower half was thylacine beneath the swan wings, striped and muscular. Her tail was needlessly long. Thick and dripping with angora fur, it stretched behind her, at least four times her current body length. And as always, her ram's horns curled below her rabbit-like ears. Typical Mother. Always wanted to stick horns on everything. Especially things related to swans. She called herself a "chimera connoisseur" and yes, she offered "constructive" criticism on everything she saw.

"Chel," she greeted the Hen. "It's nice to see you out and about early in the century for once."

The Hen bowed her head. "Mother."

 **Mother Nature** 's eyes slid along the Hen's shimmering, gossamer countenance until her daughter scrunched her feet beneath her. "How are the chicks? War? Famine? Pestilence? Unproductive Sleep?"

"Their names are William, Finnigan, Peter, and Sally, Mother. And I have a new batch of eggs now, too. For some centuries now, actually. You're welcome to visit us and see them."

"Mmhm. So are you still living underground with that… charming young rogue?"

"Just until he finishes his training. Once the student loans are paid off, we'll move up to the city." Gag. Thank starlight that would be awhile.

 **Mother Nature** slid her forelegs closer, her tail ticking back and forth at the very end. "At least tell me **Prince Morn** is the real father of your chicks. They need strong parental figures in their lives, and I'm afraid the one they have will only steer them down the wrong path."

"They're the Reaper's. I can assure you of that."

"You can tell me truthfully if they aren't. I won't rub it in the crow's face." **Mother Nature** leaned even further forward. "Although I doubt he would be surprised. After all, he knows how you are with commitment. Coming and going as you please, adding ridiculous bobbles on tiny creatures for courtship displays that exhaust them, designing inefficient reproductive habits that drive so many of your creations to extinction, always leaving him to pick up after you…"

The Hen kept her gaze level. "Ross and I are happy working in tandem, Mother. It fulfills us both. Sure, he's a bit dirty and scruffy around the edges, but…" She found herself smiling despite herself. "Ross is never predictable. He dabbles in this and that, always innovating. There's so much he wants to try. He excites me. He appreciates the presents I send him and takes care of every one as though they were trophies won in war. I'm proud that my chicks can grow looking up to him."

"The **Reaper of Souls** never even takes _your_ favor when you kiff-tie." She stated this with a triumphant gleam in her eye. Turning her head, she fixed her daughter with the other one. It was deep brown, full of rich soil prepared to sprout. "The chicks will grow up seeing him as the submissive scavenger he is soon enough."

"All right, Mother. When my children fall in love with someone wonderful who is willing to follow them to every world in the universe, I'll be sure to tell them that."

 **Mother Nature** did not push the issue. She simply left the temple, her plumed tail lifted behind her and rippling as she oozed away behind the door. The Hen rolled her eyes and stepped across the room to join Sunnie and Dayfry. The latter sat on the floor by his desk, "holding" the hovering globe between all four of his hands.

"You know," Sunnie was saying, leaning over Dayfry's shoulder as he worked, "you could get an orphan bonus if you kill off her parents."

"I suppose I could. But that seems mean."

Sunnie turned his head, squinting. "She'll hurt for a little while, but she's only one mortal. That's how you get achievements. That's how you win."

Dayfry spilled the dice beside the game board. "I don't just play campaign mode. I'm interested in watching cultures develop and the different economies grow all across my world. I have fun learning the storylines of my people. I like helping them achieve their personal goals. And when I'm done playing with a world, instead of wiping it and starting over, I like to put it on my shelf and start a new game with a new world instead." So saying, he gestured to the shelves above his desk. There had to be dozens of tiny globes set on stands there, progressing and developing even when their deity had turned his attention away.

"And… That makes you happy?"

Dayfry shrugged. "More than anything."

Sunnie stuck up his chin. "Well, I like winning. That's why I only play King of the Hill mode."

"Yes. Isn't it nice that we can all have fun playing different ways?"

"But the mortals aren't alive like we are. They're just mortals."

"They still have so much potential."

At that, Sunnie shook his head. His long ears flopped about his face. "We're more powerful than them, and it's our world. We should decide what we want them to do. There are so many of them, it's okay to lose a few to insanity or disease if it stops the others. Sacrifices have to be made sometimes. This is where strategy comes in. That's when it's fun."

"You can believe in interfering if you want when you play with your games, but when I play by myself, I prefer to let nature take its course. I like mortals."

"You don't have to be this way with every planet. You can mix it up sometimes. Push your boundaries, test your limits. Explore. Learn. Grow."

"I know. But I'm in no rush."

"And besides," Sunnie went on, "there are so many ways cultures can develop on the same world. So many different personalities, so many different relationships. Aren't you into that sort of thing? There are thousands of alternate timelines possible in a single game. Grandmother and Grandfather made each one special and unique, so it's not like you can just get another game of the same world. Why would you only want to play once and be done without tapping into all that potential?"

Dayfry lowered the globe into his lap. "I like seeing what the mortals decide to do when I don't boss them around directly."

"But you're missing out on all the bonuses."

"Not all of them."

"Most of them."

Dayfry only shrugged again. He was still smiling, his gaze on a purple star on a boat somewhere in the sea. "When I do pick a medium, I try to pick someone who really deserves my power. Someone who came from a humble background and can make not only their life better, but the lives of the people around them. I think people like that understand the needs of those around them better than I can just watching them from the outside. I like granting selfless miracles. I like watching my people learn and grow."

"I don't get it," Sunnie said. "If you would strategize your resources effectively, you could earn more achievements and unlock more customization and interference options. Instead of waiting years or even centuries for them to randomly get lucky and develop concrete on their own, you could grant them a miracle, thus making them want to build you more monuments and worship you more. Then you could use those points to unlock the research path early and grant them enough knowledge that they could have concrete by the time I left this room."

"I don't want to force my scholars to spend extra time away from their families if they don't want to."

"But it's the most effective strategy."

Dayfry smirked. "If it makes you feel better, I get happiness bonuses when they spend time with the ones they love. Plus, when their parents are happy and think of me as benevolent, their children are more likely to follow in their path."

"Not that there's much point, since you still waste time and resources taking care of them even when they don't give you anything in return."

"They don't deserve to be sad. Sure, some prayers and offerings would be nice, but I don't like them any less than the other people in their town."

Sunnie leaned his cheek against his hand, scanning the game board. "I don't like that Zamantha woman. I can't believe you let her give up being an acolyte to be a housewife. You should have sent her a sign telling her to marry Rhis instead of Nax."

"Rhis is pretty strict with his younger brothers," Dayfry said, rotating the globe. "He'd probably be snappy with his children. I don't think Zamantha would have liked living with him. That's why she didn't marry him. He'll be happier with someone who actually likes his personality."

"But with one parent being a military general and the other being a temple acolyte, it's almost guaranteed their kids would go on to do great things. There's so much pressure, how could they not? Nax's family doesn't even have any social status. They're just commoners."

"All right, Sunnie."

Sensing Sunnie's mounting impatience, even though Dayfry was doing a good job of maintaining his own temper, the **Cycling Hen** stepped forward again. "Sunnie, why don't you and I go up to surface and find Twis and Munn? I'm certain they'll play with you."

Sunnie looked up. "Can we sculpt? I want to sculpt. Dayfry's playing with his succubi planet. Grandma made it special for him. Can she make me a planet for me to play with my own creations? Especially since Saturn and Winni are still using my other game?"

"I… think she's very busy teaching at the academy. But I suppose you and I could sculpt for a little while, if we only use a little bit of clay. But you'd have to keep anything you make in your room."

Sunnie cheered up at once. Hopefully she wouldn't regret this.

Plane 23 was famous for its red canyons. Or at least, that's where the central city had been founded. The cliffs stretched on for light-years (as the jellyfish swims), but if one _did_ manage to find their way out of them, one would quickly stumble across the rolling hills of long, pure white grass which whispered in the breeze. Or created the breeze.

The city itself sprouted from the scarlet rocks. The buildings were white and always pristine, and every street was paved with silver. Upon squeezing from the crystal tunnels through a highly undignified jagged crack in the ground, Sunnie and the Hen found themselves a short ways outside the official city limits, near the orchards. Nearby they spotted a spirit with the lower half of a leafy red rooster sitting in the shade of a strawberry-colored tree.

"Hi, Auntie." Thurmondo lifted his scroll from his lap. "I came up to surface to read, like you asked me to."

"Thank you, Thurmondo. I appreciate it. Have you invented anything interesting lately?"

"I've been experimenting. Fiddling. Trying some things out. Now I'm looking up a fact." He flipped the scroll over to its back and didn't elaborate.

"We're going to ask Munn and Twis if they want to sculpt with us. Would you like to join in?"

"No thanks. I'm reading about how _rex_ grow back their tails when they lose them."

"Good luck, dear." The Hen brushed his head with her wing and left him to it.

"Auntie! Sunnie!"

Sunnie perked up at the sound of his younger brother's voice. The Hen turned. Twis trotted along the orchard towards them on his four donkey hooves, his arms laden with glowing golden branches. Dust, smoke, and mist kicked up in the cloudy path behind him.

"Have either of you seen my _Vespula_ s?" he asked. "I finished cleaning out and rebuilding the second hive just a bit ago, but now I don't know where the swarm went."

Immediately after he said that, high-pitched howls flew towards them from the flower park where Prince Morn and Princess Eve generally went on walks together. Twis sighed.

"Of course. Munn got them."

The **Cycling Hen** chuckled. "You know how playful he is. His mother will knock him around and noogie him a bit, but she knows he's only playing. Well, I was about to bring down some clay for Sunnie and I to sculpt with. Would you like to join us?"

"I'd love to. Maybe I will. Maybe. But I really don't have time to waste on creating lifeforms I can't put anywhere." Twis wiped his forehead with the back of one wrist. He'd started to sprout dark, curly hairs along his chin like a billy goat, the Hen noticed with a touch of amusement. He must be growing faster than most of his brothers. "I also wanted to graft this luminescent branch onto one of the fruit trees in my orchard before long. Thurmondo was helping me, but I think he forgot. As usual."

"Maybe Sunnie could help you. If nothing else, he could water your garden while I get the clay and set up a working station for us."

"But I don't need any…"

"Prince Tuesday." The Hen fixed him with a meaningful look. Even if she was willing to grant a portion of Promethean clay to Sunnie, she was certainly not willing to take him up the cliff and show him where to harvest it.

Twis scuffed one of his hooves against the path, inciting another swirl of dust and mist. "Yes, I suppose so, Auntie. Come on, Sunnie. Then we'd better go find Munn before he gets into trouble."

Sunnie shrugged and bounced over to him. "Besides letting them loose to sting people, what's the worst he can do with _Vespula_ s? Infect them with deadly bacteria and unleash untold chaos into the universe?"

"I just don't want to be around when he tries to find someone to pin the blame on."

"I'll be sure to vouch for you if anyone wants to hold you responsible," the Hen promised.

"Thanks, Auntie."

They left, Sunnie waving his arms and ranting the whole way about the unfairness of his general life, and Twis nodding along with everything he said and occasionally flicking an ear in sympathy. Good. Perhaps when Sunnie finished expressing his frustrations, he wouldn't be quite so cranky. Being with Twis always seemed to rejuvenate him.

Once they were gone, the Hen spread her wings and took off for the free-falling waterfall in the distance. Those were sacred waters plummeting from the great rosewater fountain, Kiiloëi, on Plane 24 just above. It soaked the rainbow cliffsides there, bathing them in energies and powers that even the nature spirits had only just scratched the surface of. Shadowy birds with snapping talons circled the peak. Promethean clay wasn't nearly as difficult to come by as it probably should have been considering how powerful the stuff was. It was sort of just over there on top of the mountain, and not too difficult a journey for anyone who could fly. The main feature keeping the stuff out of the hands of curious dead souls residing in the city below was that it _reeked_.

Really, really reeked. Millions of years of spoiled dairy products trapped in sulfur caves sort of reeked. This was the kind of stuff that would knock a mere mortal out instantly, and that even the dead only tried to obtain if they were also carting a stinky mustelid along, just to lift its tail for a blissful whiff of something sweeter.

But the Hen, being the Hen, was not one to be deterred by olfactory unpleasantries. With her smile infinitely unfazeable and her patience unbound, she simply couldn't be bothered to. Being a nature spirit, she had control over every last aspect of her body, down to the growth of individual feathers and the reactions of her senses. She could will herself not to be affected by the smell. A power that far too many dead souls she'd seen arrive on Plane 23 over the millennia, sad as it was, were willing to exchange their chance at reincarnation for. They often regretted it, as far as she knew, once they realized just how much _schooling_ it required to be licensed as a nature spirit (For crying out loud, her own husband wasn't officially done yet). Not to mention the strength of their belief, lest they crumple and fail. Preparing for reincarnation alone took nine years of careful study, followed by an intensive exam, except under extreme circumstances when one spirit might take pity on the sob story of a straggler and wave them through anyway.

Landing on the cliffs overlooking the Pool of Rejuvenation and the Salty River of Woe, the Hen couldn't help but notice that one soul, indeed, had come from the city to brave the stench today. She sighed. Of course. There was always one. The polite thing to do would be to acknowledge him, to warn him away, but the Hen had done that far too many times this week alone. While few things could faze her, the niggling hatred of being laughed at was one that always managed to crawl under her skin.

So instead, she spared the soul only a partial glance before setting to work herself. She sunk her claws into the soft cliffside, raking together a sizable clump of the stuff. Perfect. Now, to just avoid dropping blotches of clay throughout the sparkling silver city as she flew back to find Sunnie and Twis. That would certainly put a damper on everyone's day, and we couldn't have that.

It wasn't long before the three spirits settled around a picnic table in one of the orchards far, far away from the city itself. Especially with the rank clay piled beside them, they wouldn't be disturbed by anyway except Munn, who had decided to join them until he'd accidentally knocked his jar of _Vespula_ s off the table and shattered it in the mist and smoke of the ground. Now he was fruitlessly chasing after them with a net full of holes. Thurmondo had decided to join them after all just for the company. Though with his nose buried in his work as usual, he didn't seem inclined to get his hands dirty.

This particular orchard was one of the Hen's favorites, with pink crystal trees that bore flat emeralds instead of leaves, and peridot flowers the size of breakfast plates. The grass went up to her ankles, and past many of the younger spirits' knees. Smaller souls, if she remembered correctly, were usually engulfed. Why was it that of all the sacred animals major spirits took the forms of, none of them had claimed a goat? That would help keep the grass trimmed down.

Sunnie sat at the gleaming black table in silence, molding with his fingers even as his eyes kept wandering to what Twis was doing. The Hen paused from her own sculpting to watch the way Sunnie worked. His attention to detail was unparalleled. He layered each overlapping scale row after row, designing them individually, checking their sizes against the others before he pressed them carefully down. When she pointed this out to him, he shrugged.

"Saturn was being unfair when he said I was so eager to claim resources that I didn't care about my people's culture. I actually do like taking my time to do things right. I just like controlling some things because I like to know what's going on. I don't like it when the mortals do things wrong and then get upset about the consequences. If they would just listen to me, I could help them make the best choices."

"You'll make a fine spirit when you're older."

He looked up. "You really think so?"

"Of course." Although the Hen sat across the table from him, she touched his shoulder with her wing. "I'm sorry if you felt excluded by your brothers today. You're still young. It's only natural to bicker a bit with each other at that age."

Sunnie added another scale to his clay figure. "Thanks for letting me do this with you. I like making things. It feels useful and makes me happy."

"What are you sculpting?"

"It's a new species that's part fish, but it has hands. I'm going to keep it in one of the tanks in my room until I pass Dad's test and get the Bears' permission to put my creations on actual planets."

The Hen nodded. "That sounds like a good plan. What is the species called?"

Sunnie grinned. "A mermaid!"

"That's a cute name. I like it."

"Well, I guess 'maid' is just for girls. The species can be called merfolk. There can also be mermen. I guess there are mergirls and merboys too." He absorbed himself in his work once again.

The Hen brought her attention to the spirit sitting beside her, who had rolled his clay into a long tube with narrow ends. He was now staring at it, brows drawn, with his lips pressed in a thoughtful pout. "What did you make, Twis?"

"Some kind of creature that will dig tunnels and aerate the soil for me. I don't know what it's called yet."

Still adding scales to his mermaid, Sunnie glanced over at the tube. "I can help you decorate it if you want. You should give it arms and a real head. You don't even have to give it legs if you don't want to. I didn't. It's hard to get the legs right, so I usually just don't try."

Twis scratched his cheek. "I want it to be one of those creatures with the frills that flare up when they're surprised. I think they look fascinating. This one will have blue frills, like you, Sunnie." Here he looked up at the Hen. "Maybe they can use them to attract their mates too."

"I'd like that."

"Of course you would, Auntie. It's kind of your thing."

She ducked her head modestly. "What can I say? I like it when my creations reproduce successfully and raise tiny babies."

"What are you making, Auntie?" Sunnie asked, shifting one eye to her work. He'd added long flowing hair to his mermaid not much different from his own.

"Something different. I thought I might try six arms this time."

"Six?" Twis looked up. "That sounds heavy."

"Hmm… Then I suppose I'll have to give them some wings to help carry some of that weight. And maybe six eyes to see things with."

"Like an insect," Sunnie said approvingly.

"Only bigger. Strong enough to carry things. I want to put those six hands to good use, after all." The Hen ran the feathers of one wing along her creation, pressing in deep and smoothing out many of the bumps until she formed a head with a distinct neck. Board games and arguments may not be her thing, but she'd always enjoyed working with the clay. She smiled at Sunnie. "You know, I'll bet they would be excellent at snowball fights."

But Twis shook his head. "They would get too cold."

"Then I'll give them fur." She took the end of her wing and began cross-hatching into the clay figure's torso.

Sunnie pointed his finger. "But you already gave them feathers."

Indeed, she'd gotten as far as coating the ankles with tiny, crooked feathers before she'd become distracted with the arms. The Hen squinted. "Oh. I did, didn't I? Oh well. This one will be a mix."

"I don't think that's how it works." Sunnie started to get up. "I should check the rulebook."

"That's all right. Not every species has to last for long. Sometimes I just make things for fun. I don't mind if they don't survive on the planet where I place them." Pausing from the fur, the Hen held the clay figure in front of her eyes. "The Reaper loves it when he's out working and he stumbles upon something completely new I've made. You know how obsessive he is about organizing the city, putting this species there and that one there and that one there. I wonder where he'll decide to put this one. Maybe I can send him this creature in time for our anniversary. It's interesting. I like it. I'll bet the new chicks will love it too, once they hatch."

Sunnie shook his head. Although he was still staring at the Hen's creation, his hands worked rapidly with the stuff before him, pinching and pressing. "I'm not going to waste this clay. I want everything I make to last. I'm going to be very careful. I'll add gills, and make sure I get all the reproductive parts right, and I'll even make them able to breathe air _and_ water. And they'll have swim bladders so they can float. And maybe webbed fingers. This race will last until I'm old."

"Is yours a boy or a girl?" Twis asked her.

The Hen stared at the clay before her. For something she'd slapped together at random, it was actually shaping up to be rather cute. Must be those pointed ears. Everything looked cute once you added pointed ears. Without thinking about it much, she'd designed it to be bipedal. Of course, it might need a long tail to balance some of that weight. Would a thin one with a cute puff on the end be enough? Probably not, but it was worth a try. If nothing else, the wings should help. Maybe she'd add a second set. She reached for another scoop of clay. "I'm not sure yet."

"I think it's a boy," Sunnie decided once she'd blended the tail into place.

"Could be. And now, for the finishing touch." The Hen brought her beak down and gave the clay figure a sharp peck on the stomach, forming a gash. "I've always had a soft spot for marsupials. Now it's perfect."

Her creation began to move. Sunnie and Twis watched in silent fascination as the clay pushed itself up. It stayed on all its hands and feet for a minute. Its tail lashed twice. Then it gathered its strength and stood, arms wobbling. It maintained that proud posture for only a few seconds before it plopped down on its rear. Gingerly, the Hen offered it the tip of her wing and helped it back to its feet. It continued holding onto her as it began to explore the table. "It's too top-heavy," Sunnie protested, and Twis said, "It doesn't need all those arms. They'll just get in the way."

"Well." The Hen touched the back of its head with a single feather. "I like it. I'm glad I breathed life into it instead of mashing it back up. I wonder… Which planet do you think the real creature that this doll is paired with ended up on?"

"Wait," Sunnie said suddenly. "You forgot to make that one a boy or a girl."

The Hen laughed. "I suppose I did."

"But now the whole species is like that!"

"Sometimes this happens. In time, they'll figure something out. If they don't, I wasn't expecting them to last long anyway."

"Speaking of which-!" Twis yelped. He ducked as a small swarm of _Vespula_ s flew across the table. After them flew Munn, swiping at them with a long net. The Hen pulled back her wings, but not her clay figure. Munn's net slammed straight into it. The clay flew from the table and hit cloud, shattering into three separate pieces. "Munn!" Sunnie screeched. "You broke it! She gave it life and everything!"

"Oops." Sheepishly, Munn straightened up and hid the net behind his back. His feet hovered just above the ground. "Sorry, Auntie. I'll make you a new one."

"It's all right." The Hen swept the smashed bits into her wings and set them back on the table. They were still wiggling, fumbling blindly around for their missing pieces. "I can make three smaller creatures out of the remaining bits instead. I certainly have enough arms and eyes to go around. My first design was a bit impractical anyway. This time, I'll make one creature with fur, one with feathers, and one that's like an insect. No harm done."

Twis picked up the squirming torso. "These pieces are all dirty now. Look at all the dust that got mixed in. You'll never get this out."

"Sorry about that," Munn said again.

"I don't mind. It adds character." The Hen rolled a new ball of clay between her wings. "I'll fix them up, and this time I'll remember to create both sexes. Maybe they can all be friends."

Just then, a sound halfway between a crow and a shriek tore through the air. Over by the tree, Thurmondo sprang to his feet, pointing two fingers. "Daddy's home!"

Sunnie and Twis immediately lost interest in their clay sculptures. "Daddy!" They took off across the orchard. **Tarrow** himself, cloaked in a red cape that swirled around him as he hovered above the ground, crouched down to catch them in his arms.

"Hello, kids. Did you miss me too much?"

Sunnie embraced one of his arms and Twis took another. Thurmondo took the third, and Munn was soon there to tackle him from behind. The four pounced all over him, squealing and swatting.

"Did you bring us anything?" Thurmondo asked, wrapping around his leg.

"Thurmy," Munn scolded, "Don't be rude."

"I was just curious!"

The Hen walked over to join them. As she moved, she thought over each of her words in turn, trying to pick out a phrase that didn't sound as accusatory as she almost would have liked it to be. She settled on, "How was your trip?"

 **Tarrow** averted his eyes. He bent down, forcing Munn to slide from his neck to the ground. "Uneventful."

"It will be nice to have you around again. Will you be staying with us long, or are you off to Plane 24 again soon?"

"No, I'm… I'm staying. For a while."

She bobbed her head. "I'm glad. The kids were great. There was an argument or two, but they're all growing up to be fine young spirits. You should be proud of them."

"Chel?"

The Hen had started to turn away. She blinked. **Tarrow** floated above the trodden path, holding the elbow of the one arm whose hand was physically disconnected from the rest of his body. The Hand of Fate. **Tarrow** looked smaller standing there than she remembered, even with his kids clinging to his legs. Younger. Scruffier. More like an adolescent all of a sudden than the drowsy but proper gentleman she'd grown familiar with, his aura forcibly shifting her reality to reflect his embarrassed state of mind. His red cape nearly smothered him, its tattered ends flowing all around him like the tendrils of a jellyfish. The Hand of Fate's fingers clenched.

"I know I've been distant since the **Hocus Poconos** and I… separated… but I really do appreciate you watching out for my sons. Even if I'm not always around to show it."

The half-hearted vocal praise meant about as much to her as a handful of sand. There were only so many times one could stand to be thanked with empty promises before it begun to wear on them. The Hen had been wearing out for billions of years, even though she strived to never show it. Nonetheless, she bowed her head again. "Of course, Brother. But they did miss you every moment."

"They need a mother," **Tarrow** muttered. "I'm glad they at least have you."

"Dad, Dad." Sunnie tugged on one of his lower arms. "I made a waterfall out of a river. Can I show you?"

Munn embraced his father's neck from behind this time. "And after you see Sunnie's waterfall, I want to show you how fast I can fly to the mountains and back."

"And I made the honeysuckles blossom!"

"I cleaned a _Vespula_ hive all on my own."

One benefit of having four hands was, it made it easy for **Tarrow** to ruffle four heads all at the same time. "You can all show me what you're working on," he promised. "But first, I need to let Dayfry know I'm here."

With **Tarrow** watching over his children, the **Cycling Hen** finished work on her three creations and cleaned away the rest of the clay. Then she made her slow return below ground to her familiar henhouse. The **Reaper of Souls** was up and alert, perched carefully on all three of their eggs. He shifted to one side as she climbed the ramp. After she had set the three clay figures in their terrarium on its shelf, he asked, "How was your day, sugar?"

"Oh," she murmured, and leaned her cheek into his feathers with a yawn. "Just the usual, dear."


	45. (124) This Is a Box

_Summary:_ Time for Timmy to find a gift for the Fairy Reunion gift exchange is running out, and Gray Tuesday may be his last hope- even if today is for Pixies what Friday the 13th is for Anti-Fairies.

 _Characters:_ Chloe, Timmy, Poof, Finley, Foop, Dark Laser, Crocker, Kevin, Mrs. Crocker, Girlfriend, H.P., Anti-Cosmo, Sanderson, assorted pixies, assorted parental figures both magical and mundane

 _Rating:_ K+

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Evolution Hopeful" / "Step Back"

 _Prerequisites:_ "Evolution Hopeful"

* * *

 **124\. This Is a Box** (Just after the "Evolution Hopeful" Prompt)

 _Year of Water, Autumn of the Aligned Raindrops_

* * *

The Carmichaels did not associate with the Turners around Thanksgiving. Buddy, the Carmichaels barely associated with the Turners, period. And November or not, here in the suburbs, autumn-colored fleece sweaters didn't make the greatest form of camouflage. Not even in the dark. Chloe had figured that out in the worst way possible. Crossing the street? Tried it. No-go. Connie and Clark weren't risking any chance that their daughter _might_ sneak over for a bite of turkey, even when Chloe insisted she faced no such temptation. And they were still acting like this when Thanksgiving had been four days ago, too. Because leftovers. Gotta love 'em. Figured that the one time her parents insisted on sticking around to keep tabs on her would coincide with the most calorie-heavy meal of the year…

In all honesty, it was Timmy, Cosmo, and Wanda who held her interest more than the food. And Poof, who had texted them all last week that he planned to pay a visit. Chloe didn't know all the details, but he'd said it involved "a surprise", and Wanda and Cosmo had expressed all sorts of feelings ranging between streamers and party blowers, and endless sobbing. Needless to say, they had enjoyed a party over there just after dinner today. And she, Chloe Carmichael, practically an honorary member of the Turner family, had not.

Chloe leaned her back against one closed window in her bedroom, taking her hot chocolate in small sips and mouthfuls of marshmallows. Outside was dark and leaf-littered. A crisp chill wafted in through the second window, but it was still warmer than the winters she'd been used to back home. Living in California was a new experience. It hadn't snowed yet this year. Timmy said it rarely did here, especially not recently with Global Warming and all. Usually godkids had to wish for it. She wasn't sure how many children that entailed, but apparently snowy November wishes were largely a thing of the past. They might've gotten bored of it. Maybe she'd get lucky later in the season, but for now, Dimmsdale would just have to make do with pretty leaves and baggy sweaters a little while longer.

Chloe paused mid-chuckle, the lip of the hot chocolate mug resting at her mouth when she noticed movement across the street. Completing her sip, she leaned forward. "What is…"

A bright shape rocketed through the air and smacked against her window. Chloe almost dropped her hot chocolate. As it was, she spat half her swallow back into the cup. Her instant urge was to karate chop the intruder, but the glass between them stopped her hand. She took the chance to breathe instead. The figure was large, at least a foot and a half tall, spread-eagle like an attacking bear. He wore a lightweight, long-sleeved hooded shirt decked out in horizontal stripes. A gap-toothed smile grinned down at her. Pale brown freckles dotted his cheeks and nose. Messy purple curls framed his ears. His right hand clutched a rattle like a wand. A golden crown floated a handspan above his head.

"Wait." Chloe narrowed her eyes. "Poof?"

Poof buzzed his wings and peeled himself away from the window. He tipped his crown, then made a beckoning motion with his hand. Chloe blinked. Setting her mug over on her desk, she took the lower portion of the window and lifted it.

"Wow, Poof. You got a whole lot bigger since I saw you over spring break. You look like you're an actual kid now! No offense."

Poof cleared his throat, dropping his voice into a regal, almost seductive boyish baritone, as though he were welcoming her to a lavish palace banquet. "Ha ha ha! Perish the thought, my dear Lady Chloe of Carmichael. Although I must admit, I could say the same to you, now that I see you doing something besides obsess over rules and funtivities."

"Uh-huh. What are you doing at my house? It's dark, but not _that_ dark. Someone might see you."

Poof shook his head, still hovering outside the window. He magically slicked back his hair to reflect the look of a seemingly British secret agent. Then he saluted, rattle held vertically near his cheek. "I'm afraid I am a man on a mission, Lady C.C. Come over. And do take care not to let my parents know, hm? There's a good lass now."

Chloe glanced over her shoulder at the empty birdcage on the far side of her bed. Cosmo and Wanda hated to be split up. Technically, not even Jorgen could force them to be. They held joint godparenting licenses that allowed them to work together, after all. After several months, she and Timmy had finally worked out a system of sharing fairies that they both agreed on. Cosmo and Wanda usually stayed with her on even days, and they stayed with Timmy on odds. Since they pretty much all hung out together every day that Timmy hadn't promised to spend exploring the town outskirts with Sparky or that Chloe's parents hadn't over-scheduled her for, things were working out okay.

At first, Chloe had expected Timmy to either throw a fit about being separated from Cosmo and Wanda for any length of time, or get himself mauled by some woodland animal. But to her surprise, he'd gravitated naturally into hanging out more with his friends Chester and A.J. Rekindling his back-up friendships with Sanjay and Elmer hadn't been far behind. Lately they'd been hanging out together most nights to play board games, watch movies, or tinker around with A.J.'s dad's old robots. Timmy's friends and back-up friends were nice and all, but Chloe didn't want to intrude on their guys' nights. So, she kept a respectful difference even when Sanjay once mentioned to her in passing that no one would object if she did. It was probably good for Timmy to do things on his own without Cosmo and Wanda hovering over his shoulder for awhile. Plus, this way she had the fairies all to herself. She liked that. Not because she felt possessive of them or anything, but just because this way, Timmy wasn't around to mock her for her wishes, or shoot down her ideas, or wave them off as something he'd already done before.

Pink and green feathers still littered the bottom of the empty birdcage. In a few more hours, it would be the 28th. Even. Cosmo and Wanda should be here to check in for a sleepover in her room. This, however, was a special occasion. Poof had come home today, after all, so both she and Timmy had allowed Cosmo and Wanda to spend the day out and about with their son wherever they wanted. Last Chloe had overheard from the news on TV, a toddler with wavy purple curls had been spotted charging down a pier in pursuit of a seagull who had stolen a beakful of his fries, with his mother and father not far behind. Witnesses swore that his leaps between the posts had been so fast and fluid, he almost looked as though he were flying.

If Cosmo and Wanda weren't here and Poof was alone, they must have returned to Timmy's goldfish bowl even earlier than usual in anticipation of tomorrow's switch. It would have been nice if they'd have wished her goodnight. Oh well. "Okay," she murmured. "But what in the name of hoopla is going on?"

"You'll see," Poof said, switching back to his regular, high-pitched baby voice. He beckoned with his hand again.

Her window didn't have a screen. Too many adventurous parents dropping down from the roof and springing uninvited into her personal space had negated the need for one. It wasn't hard for Chloe to double-check that she was still wearing pants (even if they were pajama pants) and swing her legs over the sill. The last thing Connie and Clark Carmichael would ever expect of their obedient daughter was her sneaking out after being explicitly told not to. And to be fair, a few months ago, just the thought of such an underhanded action would've made Chloe quiver in her sandals. But she was a big girl now. One with absent parents, and friends who filled the resulting gap. She _deserved_ this. Timmy was like a step-brother to her these days, and Poof an extension of that family too. They'd all been separated for a week, and she really wanted to see her other family again. The one that was actually involved in her life.

There wasn't a rain gutter pipe that would let her slide safely from her window to the bushes. Nor a tree with strong branches to climb down. Not even a slanted sort of awning. Chloe took a leap of faith and slipped through her window anyway. She plunged straight into her mother's rose trellis, flattening it with a series of _oof_ s and crunching wood, and crawled out covered in petals and thorns.

Poof flew down to join her. With a whirl of his rattle, he repaired the broken trellis completely. "I could have _poof_ ed you across the street if you'd asked."

"Could've, but where's the fun in that?" Automatically, Chloe rubbed her jaw. "Cosmo's dropped me on my face a few too many times lately that I just don't want to risk it."

"If you say so."

Chloe inhaled the scent of rain. Grubby, mottled leaves covered the grass- even on her lawn, perfect as it normally was. It felt rebellious. It felt great. When Chloe walked, she took special care to watch her feet, and not tred on any cracks in the sidewalk. Or worse, on any invertebrate brought up by the rain. And tonight, there were an awful lot of those. Halfway to the road, she crouched low, wrapping her hands around her knees. "Ohhh, just look at them. Poor squishy little guys all washed up without a home."

"They're just worms," Poof said, hovering behind her shoulder.

Chloe scooped one of the worms into her hand and moved it off the sidewalk to what appeared to be a dry patch of dirt. She set it down, then scraped a bit of soil on top of it. "This is the fattest worm."

Poof crossed his arms, tapping his foot in the air. "Can we go now?"

Just as he said that, a light went on in Chloe's living room. Startled, Poof disappeared in a pillar of white dust. He blinked into existence again as a cloud-shaped pin on her pajama shirt. Chloe smothered her giggles and took off across the street as fast as her bare feet could take her. And her parents sure didn't suspect a thing.

Chloe had her own key to the Turner residence. She kept it on the lanyard she always wore under her shirt. Even when she slept. Definitely when she slept (Her parents had "helpfully" moved her things around too many times in the past and then disappeared on week-long trips before she even woke up again). Timmy's Dad had tossed her the key as soon as she'd requested it without asking questions. Probably out of gratitude after she'd slipped him that stock tip that had taken off and made the Turners totally rich. Chloe liked Timmy's Dad all right. At least he was nice, even if he wasn't really the brightest or the most respecting towards the sanctity of nature. And although Timmy's Mom wasn't known for being much of a cook, she always seemed to find the time to bake something special to bring across the street. And she spoke Russian, just like Chloe, so that earned her extra brownie points where her homemade fudge did not.

Humming one of the songs Wanda had taught her during the Autumn Turn celebrations in August, Chloe rifled through the keys and decorative knickknacks on her lanyard for the correct one, and slid it into the lock. She pushed open the door, reached for the light switch, and stopped.

"Whoa. What happened here?"

The lamp from the side table lay on the floor, its cord snaking behind it. One of the family pictures had been knocked from the wall. Cushions were flipped from the couch. A mattress stood, tilted, against the wall. Poof reappeared with another burst of dust, clenching his teeth.

"Yeah. Don't get so worked up about it. It's just that time of year."

" _You_ seem worked up about it."

"Nah, I'm chill. I can handle Thanksgiving weekend."

Chloe walked past the couch to the fireplace, sweeping her gaze over battered pillows and opened board games. A rustle sounded over in the corner. A lone hand snaked out from behind the mattress and jerked her underneath.

"Hey!"

Before she knew it, Chloe found herself squinting directly into the beam of a stuttering flashlight. Behind it, she could make out two over-sized buck teeth, a battered pink hat, and scruffy brown bangs that fell over a pair of grim blue eyes. Was that striped shirt part of his pajamas? He wore his hat even with his pajamas?

"Timmy? Where are Cosmo and Wanda?" As Poof crawled beneath the mattress to join them, she lifted her hand to shield her face. "Hey, can you cut it out? My future self really will need an eye patch at this rate."

Timmy switched the flashlight off. "You've got pupils. You're real. I guess I can tell you."

"What's going on? Why are you sitting here behind a filthy mattress?" Chloe pushed her fingertip down on one of the springs. It bounced back up when she let go with a comedic _twaaang!_ "And why do your eyes look bloodshot like you haven't slept in three days?"

Timmy put a finger to his lips. He crawled to the other side of the mattress, peeked out to stare at the fireplace, then pulled his head back in. "I'm hiding from pixies. My parents wouldn't let me light a fire tonight, so I'm extra edgy. My dad's really gotten into ordering stuff off the digi-stream, or the 'Fairy Internet' lately. I tried to stop him, but I can't just wipe his memory. Who knows what he does when he's supposed to be working? Spend my college fund on super high-tech spy equipment to get back at Mr. Dinkleberg? Fairy technology in his hands would be chaos! We might only have minutes before the pixies bringing it invade!"

"They come down the chimney," Poof said cheerfully.

Chloe squinted. "Isn't that Santa?"

Timmy shook her head. "No, that's common confusion, with the deliveries pixies make today and stuff. Santa does all his magic long-distance. He grants everybody one wish as long as they write him a letter. It's pixies who make house calls to bring you stuff you order on the digi-stream."

"You seem really upset about this. Do we fight them?"

Timmy snorted. "We leave cups of coffee and dry cereal out in the mailbox and hope they go away."

"Well, that's cute. So, pixies?" Chloe brought her hands together so only a few inches of space separated her palms. "I guess they're like… pixies?"

Timmy set the flashlight on the floor. "Okay. Sorry. You know how it was Black Friday this weekend?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, pixies are a lot like fairies, but they don't have godchildren or dress in bright colors or even live in Fairy World. Instead, they fill out paperwork and stuff. They run all the big businesses in the cloudlands, and go to work in boring office buildings in Pixie World. They dress in dull gray suits and they all look identical with square faces and square wings and slick black hair and sunglasses and they all. Talk. Like. This." Timmy turned his voice into a robotic monotone at the end. "And Black Friday weekend is to them what Friday the 13th is to Anti-Fairies."

"Party central," Poof griped. "Imagine a soccer video going viral through South America during FIFA season. Then add how crazy you Americans get over the Super Bowl. That's what it's like in Pixie World right now."

Chloe thought about that for a second. "Well, I guess if Pixies are the spirits of big business and everything goes on sale this time of year, that makes sense."

"Ohh yeah." Timmy patted his flashlight against his hand and rolled his eyes. "We used to only have to deal with them on Black Friday, but ever since they started going digital, we have to deal with them on Cyber Monday too. And Gray Tuesday, which is basically the same thing as Black Friday, but for magical creatures all over the universe."

"Why on a Tuesday?"

"Don't know, don't care. But we have to go to Pixie World tonight. We're running out of time. Do you know whose name I have for the Fairy Reunion gift exchange this year? Jorgen von Strangle's!" Timmy upturned his hands to claws. "If I don't get him an impressive gift, he might grab my throat and crush me into oblivion. Or take my fairies! Or crush me and _then_ take my fairies!" He began to hyperventilate at the thought, twitching his hands and neck about.

"Hang on. There's a Fairy Reunion gift exchange? And I wasn't invited?"

"Not the part of that sentence I need you to focus on right now, Chloe."

"Well, yeah," she muttered, "but I didn't get invited." The realization stung a little more than she wanted to let on. First her parents didn't keep her informed of all their big travel and service project plans more than half a day in advance, and now her fairy godparents hadn't thought to give her the time of day either?

Timmy clapped his hands over his eyes. "Okay, people like _you_ get invited to Fairy Con because that's actually meant for godkids on purpose and it has fun and games and stuff. People like me get invited to the stuffy and pompous Fairy Reunion formal dinner party specifically so Jorgen can keep an eye on me, because the _one_ time I snuck after Cosmo and Wanda, I got framed for the Head Pixie's murder and Remy had to bail me out, but that doesn't really matter right now. We can talk about this later."

"You got framed for mur-"

"We'll talk later. I promise. Hush now."

Poof poked his head out from behind Chloe's knee. "Timmy wants to hop from the frying pan and into the fire today of all days."

"Yep. That's why we've gotta do this while Cosmo and Wanda are asleep." Timmy placed his hands on the floor and leaned in. "Our mission? We're going to Pixies Inc. to score the hottest deals on all the coolest stuff. For Jorgen, obviously. Not because there's a certain limited edition, all-thought-to-have-been-destroyed Red Ninja video game I really want to buy or anything."

Chloe shook her head. "Timmy, did you really wait until the last possible day to pick up a present?"

"I have a short attention span and I put things off to play video games!" he hollered. "And since the reunion is December 4th it's not technically the last day, it's just the last day I have a chance to do this with legitimate fairy magic on my side before Poof has to go back to school!"

Chloe glanced up at the ceiling, but somehow, Timmy's parents remained sound asleep. "Okay, so that's the day _after_ tomorrow. That's still procrastinating."

Poof _poof_ ed up a shoe box stuffed with folded paper ballots. "Don't look at me. I suggested we give him a box of coupons and preemptive 'Sorry I caused you so many migraines today' cards and call it good enough. But Timmy said that wasn't kosher."

"He's Jorgen von Strangle!" Timmy made strangling gestures with his hands. "You can't just get him any old gift. You'll _die_."

"With explosions," Poof added.

"Oh, you'll die in so many explosions."

Chloe shook her head. "Okay, well, what are we going to do about it? We wanna go to Pixie World, right? Let's hurry up and _poof_ there now before our parents find out we're gone."

Timmy made a sound like an incorrect buzzer. "Wrong! You thought wrong! Poof's not allowed to use that much magic outside of school. Especially today because of reasons. And especially if he's not supervised by an adult with a godparenting license, and I'm not sure Cosmo even counts. So the only way we're getting to Pixie World tonight is by jumping one of the pixies at exactly the right moment and forcing him to take us there before he explodes from magical backup into a thousand itty-bitty pieces."

"I… Okay. Uh, this seems like a rocky plan involving a multitude of questionable gray areas."

"It's a great plan," Timmy insisted. "It's gonna work great."

Poof raised his hands and rattle. The shoe box disappeared with a _poof_. "If Jorgen hadn't destroyed Crocker's portal, we could take that. FYI and FTR, I also told Timmy I could _poof_ us to Alden Bitterroot's well and we could catch the invisible Rainbow Connection Transit bus between Earth and Fairy World. It comes at 21:44."

"There's traffic, buddy."

"Whaaat? But all the wheels go round and round."

Chloe raised her eyebrows. "Have either of you ever tried just talking to them? The pixies, I mean? I'm sure they'd be happy to _poof_ you to where you'll buy things from them if you asked."

"Ha! You can't just talk to them when they're in this state. They're drunk on maxed-out magic. They're like-" Timmy made a grabby motion with his hand.

"What?"

"Hello, I was signing 'cuckoo.' It's that bird on the cuckoo clock."

"How is _this_ " - Chloe mimicked the gesture - "'cuckoo'? Why didn't you just twirl your finger around by your ear to sign 'crazy'? Everyone gets that!"

"Uh, guys?" Poof reached up to tap Timmy on the arm.

"Look, I'm not that great at charades, okay?"

The floor creaked overhead like a snapping twig in the woods.

"Timmy." Chloe shoved her hand over his mouth. "Your parents. They're getting up!"

Even in the dark, she saw his eyes widen. He peeled her fingers away. "I wish we were out in the front yard."

"And I wish the living room looked as nice as Timmy's parents would expect it to."

Poof waved his rattle, and it was so. With a great _poof_ , the young trio reappeared at the end of Timmy's driveway. While Timmy anxiously searched the windows of his house for signs of his parents, Chloe breathed a sigh of relief.

"I guess that's Step 1 complete. So what's the rest of the plan, guys?"

Timmy stared at his house for a second longer, then turned back to face her. He straightened his hat. "One of Poof's roommates at Spellementary is a pixie. He's here in Dimmsdale for a few days. We'll just sneak up and bag him with this butterfly net I wish we suddenly had."

 _Poof!_ Timmy gripped its handle and grinned a maniacal sort of grin above the beam of his flashlight, causing his godbrother to back away. "He's basically a kid just like Poof, so it can't be that hard. He can't even do magic. It'll be a snap. Mwahahaha."

Chloe brought her hands together in front of her mouth. "My concerns over the legalities of this situation are clashing immensely with my love of sniffing baby heads."

"That sounds like an 'I'm in' to me. Let's ride." Timmy tucked the flashlight (and, somehow, the long net) away. "I wish we had a jet-propelled double scooter."

"And I wish the scooter was silent and that we had padded helmets to keep us safe."

Obediently, Poof raised his twinkling wand. _Poof!_ "Thanks," Chloe said, strapping the helmet under her chin. "So where's this kid pixie we're hunting anyway?"

Timmy hopped onto the front of the scooter and rang its bell with his thumb. It didn't make a sound. He pulled a face. "His name's Finley. He's staying at the Crocker house this week with Foop."

Chloe pressed her lips together. "Your magical pixie roommate is staying at Crocker's house the night before the biggest shopping day in the entire magical universe."

Poof shrugged. "Yeah, it's weird. People tend to kidnap him and use him as a direct teleport link any year he stays in Fairy World or is hanging out at school. So Foop convinced him to spend his break down here so he could get some peace and quiet. It works out for us."

"And Foop is also at Crocker's place because…?"

Poof made an up and down motion with his hand to indicate the fact that his body wasn't spherical anymore. "Exoskeleton shedding. It's a big deal and he wanted to show off to his only close friends, Mr. Crocker and Dark Laser, before his parents find out he's not a blockhead anymore and drag him through a bunch of boring ceremonies and political stuff like posing for art pieces. He's basically the Anti-Fairy prince, after all, and they'll wanna make a new statue of him for their hallway." Poof thought for another second, then waved a dismissive hand. "Before they find out he physically isn't a big blockhead anymore, I mean. He still kinda is one mentally." He turned his head expectantly towards Timmy's house, as though anticipating an, "I heard that!" to be bellowed back at him. Instead, the only sound was the suspicious thump of someone slipping and falling down the stairs.

"Dark Laser from _Space Wars_ ," Chloe clarified.

"Yes. You met him once, remember?"

"And Crocker will be there too? Possibly with Kevin and definitely with his mom?"

Poof shrugged. "Hey, Mr. Crocker's really not so bad once you get to know him… But don't tell my parents I said that."

Chloe still wasn't convinced about the whole 'Two magical children conveniently visiting Dimmsdale several days after an American holiday instead of going home during a Fairy one' thing, and apparently this showed on her face, because Poof sighed. "It's not my fault. I don't write this stuff. Just go with it, okay?"

With that, Timmy kicked the scooter into gear. Chloe had forgotten it was a rocket-propelled scooter until it actually fired down the street. She yelped and threw her arms around his chest. Resisting the urge to raise her voice over the rush of the wind, which wasn't nearly as silent as the scooter, she called back to Poof, "What about your fourth roommate? Do we need to worry about him?"

Poof kept pace with them pretty well for a baby fairy chasing down a gadget that _Timmy_ had wished up. "Sammy is a changeling child. He went home to his foster family in Ohio for the Thanksgiving holidays." He shook his rattle a few times as he thought. "Muddlesomething. Muddipper. Anyway."

"Okay, that's fair."

Crocker and his mother, up one estranged half-nephew and down one kooky grandfather in the last year, lived along the train tracks on the opposite side of Dimmsdale. As far as evil secret lairs went, Crocker's was a pretty good one. Sure, it was disheveled and decrepit and totally looked like their family had held claim to it since 1665. That all made it just the sort of place a couple of young heroes were curious to creep into.

Almost every light on the street was dark, but when they pulled up, they found themselves framed in the yellow glow of a dance party in the front room. Timmy dismounted and pushed the scooter behind a scraggly bush. Poof stared down at the pathetic hiding spot as if he couldn't decide whether to beef it up with magic, or if that would trigger any traps around Crocker's yard. Staring at the cheerful commutation beyond the window, Chloe put a finger to her chin and frowned.

"Gee. I mean, I don't know if I'm really okay with this. Can we go to magical juvenile hall for kidnapping pixie children?"

At that, Timmy grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her back and forth. "Hello? Jorgen? Fairy Reunion?" He flung out his hand. "Risk of totally unfairly losing fairies ringing any bells up in the ol' noggin there?"

"Okay, okay! But we'll have to be pretty sneaky."

Poof floated up to Chloe and half covered his mouth with his hand. "FYI, it's called Wishing Well, and yes, we can get thrown in there. So let's not get caught tonight, because my mama'll kill me if this ends up on my permanent record."

"Roger."

"Poof."

Timmy had already slunk up to the window, his back flattened to the stucco wall, the butterfly net gripped in his fists. They all exchanged nods. Together, the two godkids and the fairy peered inside. Not like it was hard. After all, outside it was dark, and the interior of the Crockers' front room was lit not only with flickering fluorescent bulbs, but also with twinkling strings of ambiguous winter holiday lights and even a spinning disco ball. Poof gasped.

"They've already set up a Christmas tree. And it has _candy canes_ on it!"

"Yeah, I guess. So you like candy canes?"

Poof looked at her like she'd been _poof_ ed into a giant piece of broccoli. "Have you even had peppermint before? It's _so_ good. I want to grow it on a farm and guzzle it in my lemonade."

"Poof." Timmy gave him a sideways glance. "Wanda said no more candy canes."

"But it's been a whole year! I'm way older and more mature now."

In the face of that kind of logic, Timmy relented. "One candy cane. If the opportunity arises. But try to have some self-control, for goodness sakes."

"Hey, be grateful that Crocker's portal's out of commission. Otherwise I'd make a run through it, and how would you stop me then?"

Chloe squinted through the front window of Crocker's house, trying to figure out who she recognized. There was Crocker himself by the refreshments table, taking a break from dancing to give Girlfriend the hairless cat a scratch between the ears. She stretched out her paws, wrapping her sleepy tail around the punch bowl. Dark Laser from _Space Wars_ decked out in his full gear, cape and all. Kevin slumped against the wall behind a battered armchair, his pointy knees sticking out at awkward angles and his cell phone in his lap. Even though he wore glow-in-the-dark bracelets and necklaces like everyone else despite the brightness of the room, his mouth was pinned in a flat line of _I don't wanna know, I don't wanna know, I don't wanna know._ Poor kid. She and Timmy should really coax him to hang out more. Even they, with all their reckless wishes, had to be a better environment for him than the Crocker family.

Speaking of which, Mrs. Crocker was in the room too. She puttered around on her little legs, passing around a tray of lemon poppy seed muffins despite the fact that this completely negated the need for a refreshments table by the other wall. Foop perched on the arm of the chair Kevin sat behind, clutching two cookies in one hand and a blue plastic cup in the other. And just like Poof had promised, he'd likewise shed his old cube form for an adorable, scrawny little body. His wings had gotten so much bigger, and she could make out purple freckles across his cheeks. He wore a blue sweater vest over a long-sleeved black shirt, and shiny shoes on his feet that ended in curls just like the two massive curls between his pointy, bat-like ears. They swiveled around, and so did his eyes, like he could sense he was being watched but couldn't figure out who the culprits were. _Ohhhh_ , Chloe just wanted to grab him and squeeze him until his eyes bulged right out of his head! … But she refrained.

She searched the room again, confirming the identities of all the guests and usual residents. She didn't recognize the last small child dancing in the room as if the party was all his idea and he intended to own it.

Timmy tapped Chloe's shoulder with his whole hand. "See that kid in the red with the pointy hat that doesn't float and the sunglasses pushed up in his hair? That's the pixie. He has this disability called 'tomte', which means he can't fly or do any magic himself. But at exactly midnight, the Head Pixie - he's the boss pixie - is going to flood his veins with Fairy magic. He has control of it today. Don't ask. So we have to grab Finley before he disappears. But not too soon, or else Crocker and those guys will probably try to stop us."

"Santa Claus," Chloe said as she studied the pixie in question, thoroughly taken aback.

Poof yawned. "The red suit's just Fairy magic in physical manifestation. Finley's borrowing it today. All the pixies are. Not mine, of course. I have a training wand. There's too much raw magic for him to absorb, so it turns into a coat brimming with so much power that a human can actually see it without field-sight, which is this magic vision thing. Red magic is the highest frequency in the energy field, so in physical form it looks red. The Rainbow Bridge works the same way. Don't worry, he's harmless until midnight."

"He's glowing blue around the edges."

"He's leaking effervescence."

"That's basically carbon dioxide for Fairies," Timmy cut in.

"No worries, it's chill. We're waiting for midnight, remember? He's probably just getting ready to absorb the power. I guess."

"Mmhm." Chloe scanned Crocker's front room again. Finley had stopped dancing. Instead, he'd crouched down to crawl after a ladybug wandering across the floor. It lifted its wings and buzzed away. As soon as it did, he flung out his hand (which was covered in a white Santa-like mitten) and blasted it with a beam of bright blue energy. The ladybug disintegrated and fell to the floor in a tiny heap of ash. When Crocker cheered, Foop and Dark Laser paused to exchange uneasy glances. Kevin brought his knees closer to his chest.

Her breath hesitated. "Timmy? It sure looks to me like Finley can use magic."

Timmy lowered his chin beneath the windowsill. His hands tightened around the handle of the butterfly net. "Uh… That's not magic. That's just really fancy special party effects?" His eyes rotated around to Poof on his other side. "Hello? Double T to Nebula Zeke, what gives? It sure looks to me like Finley can use magic."

Poof broke into high-pitched laughter, startling both the human children. "What do you know! His tomte-ness is cured! It's a miracle! Hahaha… Ohhh, geez. I totally forgot to account for time zones. Kansas and Pixie World are two hours ahead of us, and we're dead. Who wants to go home and help me write some paper coupons?" He lifted his rattle and gave it the lightest shake. Chloe shoved it down.

"Careful, Poof. Remember, this is Crocker's own house. He might've trapped it with magic-detecting net traps or something."

"Oh yeah. I did barely manage to escape the lobsters last time around."

"Guys. Focus. Or we're never going to find the perfect magical gift for Jorgen, and I'm going to be out one entire fairy godfamily."

Chloe glanced through the window again, watching Finley make a dash for the Christmas tree and fly up to swat at the star. "Can't someone just _poof_ up a cool gift for you?"

"No. It has to be special. Fairies can always _poof_ stuff up, but what they really want is stuff that isn't made of magic. Magic-made stuff dribbles sticky dust everywhere like glitter, and it grows magic weeds everywhere that'll bite your ankles and steal your frozen yogurt." Timmy flapped his hands. "Fairies don't like that. To them, stuff that's NOT made with magic is cool. Mostly they just like taking things apart and pushing buttons."

"Do weeds even grow in the winter?"

"Year-round temperatures in Fairy World. Shh. Don't let them hear us."

Inside, Crocker and Dark Laser had returned to dancing. Mrs. Crocker had paused by Kevin's side in an attempt to pull him to his feet. Foop twirled on the spot, hands in the air like he was doing jumping jacks. "Oh, I think I've finally mastered this step," Chloe heard him say through the window.

Finley laughed and bumped their hips together. "Now you're getting it! Everybody now! You too, Kevin."

Kevin shook his head rapidly, pulling his hand away from Mrs. Crocker's. He was up on his feet now and his phone had returned to his pocket, but he still didn't look ready for a party. "Gee, Fin. I don't think that's such a good idea. I'm worried that I might just send you flying into the wall."

But Finley only urged him closer with a coy upturned finger. "Try me. I can take it."

Making awkward chicken hops, occasionally kicking his foot out to one side, Kevin circled the arm chair and tapped his waist against Finley's side. Finley moved about one degree in the air, and pouted.

"Do I have to come over here and _make_ you all kick this party up another notch?"

Dark Laser clapped his hands, palms pressed together and metal fingers flickering. "Oh, please. Flipsie seems to be finding this night delightful. You don't get this kind of raving in our usually quarter of the galaxy."

The robotic toy dog on the refreshments table did, in fact, seem to be enjoying himself. He wore a tiny pointed party hat on his spotted head. Girlfriend napped between him and a punch bowl that seemed to be filled with sparkling ice water instead of punch or juice. At that precise moment, Flipsie tipped over into a stack of party cups. They cascaded over Girlfriend's back in an avalanche of plastic. She shot into the air with a yowl. Crocker paused his twitchy dancing long enough to look up and hold out his arms. The cat plunged directly into them, shivering, and began to lick her leg with trembling strokes. He lifted her to his shoulder and patted her back as though she were a baby.

"Hmm. You know, I've only hosted one party before that I can remember. Unless you count all those times I've granted detention to lazy slackers who needed a taste of how heartlessly unjust the real world can be. But I'd still like to make an argument that this particular party _is_ lacking a certain pump of juice. If you're in the mood for it, I'd say crank up this gig for all it's worth."

Foop pointed two fingers. "Slam it like a toaster pedal, Fin."

Finley nodded his thanks, sliding back and forth on the spot. He shimmied his shoulders and punched the air with his fists. The music quieted to a murmur. The lights dimmed at the same time, accenting the glowing rings around wrists and necks across the room. Finley's coat glittered with scarlet magic. The wings protruding from its back, very square and tinted lightly orange, began to beat faster. The music picked up once more. Finley spun to one side, jumped, and flipped over. He landed perfectly on one foot, and the others clapped for him politely before they too began to join in.

"Hey," Poof murmured. "That actually looks like fun."

Chloe glanced over to see him floating, bobbing his rear end back and forth in time with the music. He started rising higher in the air. Timmy noticed. Placing his hand on the baby's round head, he pushed him back down.

"Okay, reel it in, trigger. You're going to get us busted."

"He's right, though," Chloe said, her feet moving as though guided by an expert. She swung her limbs gently back and forth, and even lifted one arm gracefully over her head and snapped her fingers. _Snap, snap, snap, snap._ With her other hand, she beckoned Timmy towards her. "Try it, Timmy!"

Timmy scratched behind his neck. Then he set the butterfly net down behind the bushes. "Well, I'll give it a shot." He took her hands and gave her a spin, smoothly stepping back in time to allow her to pass beneath his arm. His feet bounced in place, ready to move again. Timmy twirled her away and caught her with his other hand. He'd pinned his tongue between his lips with concentration. Even though she tried not to, Chloe couldn't help but snort.

"For our next birthday, I'm signing us both up for dancing lessons."

"You know, surprisingly I don't hate that suggestion as much as I would have a year ago. Hey. I think I'm actually pretty good at this. Almost as if…" His smile faded into concern. And from concern into horror. "Oh no. Guys, we have to stop."

"Why?" Poof protested, cha-chaing in midair.

Chloe dug her toes into the grass. They continued to dance on anyway, twirling her around and kicking up at the heels. "Hey! I can't stop. What's happening?"

"I don't know!"

Of their own free will, Chloe's feet jerked her towards the front door of the Crocker house. She stared at Timmy. Timmy stared at her, equally unable to protest. He was still swinging his hips, sometimes spinning his hands like wheels on the bus and bouncing them to one side. The door opened on its own. No one was there. Yet the two children, with Poof floating helplessly after them, waltzed straight through the entry hall and into the living room to join the dance party. Foop and Dark Laser inhaled at the same time. Kevin set his teeth. Crocker dropped Girlfriend to the floor. When Finley crushed his hand into a fist, all three intruders dropped to their knees with simultaneous "Oof"s.

"Well, well, well. I was trying to invite my stalker roommate to my party, and I caught two nosy little humans along with him. Imagine that." Finley floated over to them and pushed his shades down over his eyes. His voice was chirpy, sort of nasally, and yet very flat and monotone too. It sent the hairs on Chloe's arms rippling with goosebumps. "I can still sense the presence of other magical creatures from the other side of a window, bozo. Even on a night like tonight, when my power's zinging at a million watts higher than yours, ahahaha! Oh, geez." He rubbed his eyes and slid the shades up again. "I'm s-so flipping loaded right now."

"Hi, Mr. Crocker," Poof squeaked.

"Turner! Carmichael! And Fairywinkle, too!"

"We can explain!" they blurted together. Mr. Crocker waved them off with a downwards flap of his hands.

"Getting a head start on that cultural events assignment, I see. Come on, join the party. This is what the cool people in Anti-Fairy World do on Monday nights, or so I've been told."

Timmy and Chloe exchanged a puzzled glance. Now that they were attending middle school, they dealt with multiple teachers a day, and none of them quite so obsessed with magical beings as their fifth grade one. Both of them had _also_ heard that Crocker's last official year of teaching at Dimmsdale Elementary had ended last spring (They'd even walked over there more than once to confirm it). He was _supposed_ to be taking time off - possibly for good - to look after both his mother and his nephew while his estranged half-sister was still in the hospital. Maybe the old man had finally lost it.

Poof shrunk into the stripes of his shirt. Foop, however, broke into a cackle. Kicking his legs and throwing back his head, he almost fell off the arm of the armchair. "Yes, everyone! Do come in. We're just _dying_ to have you join us."

Dark Laser flicked his hand and unleashed his lightstick. It hummed with sizzling red energy that almost rivaled Finley's coat. "Was that the code word to annihilate our enemies?"

"Oh, gross. Put that away before you fry someone, you lunatic. You'll get soot all over my new vest. It's steam-clean only, you know."

Finley cocked a foot on Kevin's shoulder as if he were crouching down. From that position, he sized up his three prisoners, all of whom were wriggling around to the beat of the pulsing music. He kept his clenched fist where they could see it. "I wonder why they chose tonight of all nights to crash my party? I sure hope it wasn't just to s-s-see me, even though I did get my dad's charming good looks."

Timmy blinked the sweat from his eyelashes. "Heh heh… Funny you should ask. We thought maybe… we might be able to get…" His dropped his voice to a whisper. "A lift to Pixie World tonight?"

Chloe tried to give him a reassuring smile, although she wasn't sure how well the pixie could see it in the dark. "Professionally please in a little suit and tie?"

Finley set his fingertips to his chest, digging his heel deeper into Kevin's shoulder. "Do mine ears deceive me? You think you can just waltz in here and demand that I ditch my rave and return to work during my vacation time? That is un _speak_ ably rude."

"Hey, the waltzing was _so_ not our fault!"

"But you did it very well," Chloe assured him. Timmy squirmed around and squinted at her.

"Did I? It's been awhile since I've moved this gracefully. I only took two years of ballet as a kid."

"You shouldn't have quit. You're a natural."

"Do you really think so?"

"Finley," Poof spat, wrestling himself up on his knees, "let us go! We didn't do anything!"

"Let you go?" Finley blinked. His hands went out to either side. "What, so I can get jumped and used as a teleport link _again_? Not this year. Not this pixie."

Foop raised his plastic cup as though initiating a toast. "For the record, I specifically brought Fin to Crocker's thinking it would be safe from nutso Fairies and he could grab a little me-time, and I would rather not be held accountable for anything that goes on here tonight."

Poof ducked his head. "Look. I'm sorry. I know you hate this, but you're our only hope."

"Please?" Chloe tried again.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you?" Finley jumped off Kevin's shoulder. He spun in a circle in the air, arms above his head. "No one can resist a gyne's waggle dance. If you think I'm going back to Pixie World and _working_ over my Gray Tuesday holiday, you've got a head screwed on too tight. We're gonna rave alllll night. Let me hear you shout _woo!"_

Nobody "Woo"ed. Finley stared blankly for a second, then shook his head.

"Oh, right. Only works with dancing. Well, put your hands up, put your hands up!"

Obediently, Timmy and Chloe rose to their feet and did as he commanded. Everyone else in the room instantly stopped what they were doing to copy them, even when drinks sloshed out of cups (Chloe confirmed that was ice water in the punch bowl rather than actual punch). Finley gave a nod and flew to the refreshments table. One of his fingers continued to tick like a knowing metronome. "Timmy," Chloe hissed as her step-godbrother's hands went around her waist. "What's a gyne?"

He lifted her, spun her, and plopped her back on the floor. Snapping their fingers, swaying their arms like jellyfish, they both moved back and forth in sync as the music grew faster. "It's a fairy with lots of freckles. They're kind of like the popular kids in Fairy World."

"Why? Just because they have freckles?"

"Well, it's not like Fairies really care about having lots of money. I guess they just found another way to decide who the cool kids are. Fairy culture's weird."

Chloe's eyes darted over his shoulder to the helpless purple-haired fairy bouncing about behind him. "Doesn't Poof have freckles?"

"He absolutely does. Poof!" Timmy struggled to lift his hands towards his mouth, and only succeeded in landing a few classy disco moves with a jabbing finger. "Poof, fight it! You're a gyne too! Take control of this funky mess and get us out of here!"

Poof clenched his eyes and fists together. "I'm trying, buddy! He's too strong!"

Finley made a swirling hand motion in Kevin's direction. "Since there's a cultural events project due pretty soon and all, we're gonna do this the Seelie Courter way. Don't forget to take some notes, everyone. That is, if your hands can find the time. Let me hear a little spice from my friend in the back. I think it's time we set the pecking order straight."

A mortified look splashed across Kevin's face. He pushed himself away from the wall where he'd slumped. Each step as he crossed the floor was either a hop or a twirl. His wrists blurred with purple glows. He raised his hands above his head. "Timmy? Chloe? I am _so_ sorry about this."

"It's okay, dude," Timmy muttered, and Chloe offered a faintly reassuring grimace. Kevin smiled painfully back at her, then took a deep breath.

 _Clap. Clap. Clap clap clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap clap clap._

As the dancers swayed around him, clapping and stomping, Finley removed his floppy hat and held it to his chest. His neutral expression twisted into a smirk.

" _No Fae walks this world alone."_ His words were soft, thick, chanting. _"Never met a one who would. I can give you what you want. Just convince me that I should."_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap clap clap. Clap clap. Clap clap, clap._

Finley thrust both palms towards the ceiling, prompting everyone in the room to mirror his gesture. When he spun his finger in a circle, all the dancers twirled on the spot. _"Let me see you shake that thing."_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap._

 _"Everybody flash your bling."_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap clap clap._

 _"Never cross a Fairy ring."_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap._

" _Don't you let me hear you sing."_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap clap clap._ Chloe fought desperately to resist the tug of the dance floor. Timmy and Poof didn't seem to be faring any better. Foop and Dark Laser were totally into it, trying to lean close enough together to snap a selfie, while Mrs. Crocker swung Girlfriend in her arms. The cat let out a pitiful, tired mew.

" _Everyone, all eyes up here. I'll sing a song that I hold dear."_ Finley adjusted his shades in his hair. _"And every word we all should know. If you're against it tell me so."_

No one seemed able to get the words out of their throat. Kevin looked to be in physical pain, and Crocker's hungry eyes were locked on the fluttering Poof. Chloe didn't like the way her teacher was slinking around, even though the green ring around his neck gave him away. It was dark enough in the room now that if he slipped it off, she wasn't sure she'd be able to see him anymore. Well. At least there were still seven colorful glowing stars on the house arrest monitor around his ankle. That helped.

Finley, rocking his tail end back and forth like a waddling duck, set his hands to his hips. _"Let us play an ancient game."_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap._

" _Last one standing walks away. All select a partner now. Don't stop grooving or you're out."_

"What happens when we're out?" Chloe asked uneasily, bumping hips with Mrs. Crocker. She found that speaking, surprisingly, seemed to drain her of three times as much energy as normal. In answer, Finley spread his hands.

" _Bound by oath and love and war."_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap._

" _I alone will count the score. Who's the champ I'm facing down? Who will earn the victor's crown?"_

When Chloe spun around, she glimpsed the red Santa coat reflected in the dark front window. Finley's hands were still glowing blue through its mittens, like bones showing through an x-ray. "Oh! Timmy, this dance is a game. Last one standing gets to ask him a favor."

His eyes sparked in recognition. "I'll handle Foop. You take Kevin."

"Right. Good luck."

"You too."

"Are you kidding me?" Poof flew between Chloe's legs and above the Christmas tree. "I don't know how to dance! Finley, stop it! You're setting Mr. Crocker off! He can't handle this overexposure!"

Chloe flicked her gaze about in search of Crocker's glowing necklace. Dark Laser and Mrs. Crocker hadn't wasted any time pairing up. Kevin had somehow managed to control his arms long enough to cover his flushing face. Foop and Timmy stood apart, wiggling their fingers towards the ground, legs spread like they were cowboys about to draw. Girlfriend wandered by with Flipsie in her mouth.

Where was Crocker?

 _ **"** **FAIRYWINKLE!"**_

Crocker lurched from the shadows, arms snapping shut like a gruesome hug. Poof ducked away just in time. As luck would have it, he thought fast enough to kick his glasses off Crocker's face, sending them flying away into the dark. Crocker stumbled, flailing his hands about.

"Fairywinkle? Where are you?"

Finley clapped in delight, his hands crackling with visible energy. Poof flew after Timmy. "Foop, are you just gonna let him do this?"

"Oh, I get it," Chloe said, performing a simple box step in a loop. "'Don't stop grooving or you're out.' We want to stop our partners from dancing and move up to the next round. Clever."

"I think I can manage that," Dark Laser said, with an extremely cheerful edge to his voice. So saying, he swept Mrs. Crocker into the air and kissed her. Or at least, made the attempt to with his creepy metal face. She didn't seem to mind.

"No, Mama, I don't mind being left with Uncle Denzel for another couple months; I'm having a great time," Kevin mumbled to no one in particular. He'd started to swing his hips from one side to the other, but he still didn't seem inclined to remove his hands from underneath his glasses.

Crocker blinked, randomly swinging his arms. "What's going on? What happened to that _**FAIRY**_? It should lead me to more _**FAIRIES!**_ Chloe? I have an A+ for this cultural events project with your name on it. All you have to do is help me capture a _**FAIRY!**_ "

"Sorry, Mr. Crocker, but you don't teach me anymore," she called back.

Poof tugged on her arm. "Chloe, c'mon. That better not be the only reason."

Finley placed his hand against his forehead. His arm jittered up and down, and Chloe realized for the first time that his wings weren't flapping. He was just sort of… hovering, his edges outlined in bright blue. "You're not getting into the spirit of this. None of you would qualify to lead the Starshine Cotillion _at all._ "

"You fool." Foop leveled his simmering bottle at the underside of Timmy's chin. The two had started to circle one another like wolves about to lunge. He bared his fangs into a smirking grin. "It seems as though you forgot to show up tonight with a butterfly net, _Timmy Turner."_

"Oh yeah, well, I bet you weren't expecting this!" Timmy yanked out his flashlight and flared the shaky beam directly in Foop's eyes.

 _"Ahhhhh!"_ Foop slapped both hands over his face. "My ridiculously over-sensitive night vision!" Stumbling back, he slipped on the rug and toppled into the Christmas tree. He shouldn't have weighed that much, but his desperate wings sent the tree crashing into the refreshments table and spilled it over- just as Finley made a panicked dive for it. The pixie veered away. He circled the room in a wide arc, fizzing with alarm. Blue wisps of sparkling dust tailed him like streams of white behind a jet.

"You're next," Timmy said, running towards Crocker from behind. Before Crocker could swing around, Timmy kicked the backs of his knees. The old man crumpled to the floor with a muffled yelp. Chloe winced. Poof cringed a little more. Kevin gasped and took half a step closer. It was enough for even Mrs. Crocker and Dark Laser to break apart- for a moment. Timmy turned on the pixie, who still zipped in circles around the living room.

Finley's breath turned to an audible wheeze. Trails of glowing red swirled around his face. He flew up to one window and pounded his fists. Nothing happened. He dodged Crocker's groping hands, kicked off, and flew into the hall.

"And, scene! You're all totally nuts, guys! Peace out! Don't do anything I wouldn't do! _Daaaaad_ , they're gonna stuff me in a butterfly net and use me to jump Planes for no charge and 0% interest for six months again!"

"Follow that holly-jolly pixie!" Timmy shouted to Poof.

"One sec, buddy!" Poof dove into the fallen Christmas tree, grabbing for candy canes.

Chloe looked at her own dance partner, sashaying still. "I hate to do this to you, Kevin."

"No, no, please. I would hate to interrupt." His face fell into total deadpan, brows drawn down. If his feet were skittering about any faster, he'd probably have set them on fire. "Really, I understand. It's the Crocker way. Just get it over with."

Chloe swept her leg behind his and flipped him over onto his back. Kevin crashed to the floor with a grunt, curling his legs like a squashed beetle ready to die. Abandoning him with the blinded Foop, the twitching cat, and the two smooching adults, Chloe took off down the hall on Timmy's and Poof's heels. They stopped halfway through the kitchen. She skidded to a halt behind them.

"Did you guys see Finley? Which way did he go?"

"Uh…" Timmy looked at the garage door on one side. Then at the short hallway on the other. "To Crocker's room, I guess?"

Poof floated over to the hall, his rattle raised. "This way. He was moving fast. I can still sense it." He paused. "And he's… underground?"

"Oh no. The Crocker Cave." Timmy turned on Chloe, mouth agape. "Dimmsdale was built on an eerily precarious system of tunnels and caves carved out by the ocean during high tide ages ago. Crocker's claimed most of it for getting around the city crazy fast and sneakily while hunting Fairies. Who knows what traps he's set up down there? We'll never find him in time."

"Finley isn't used to handling magic, and he could really get himself hurt," Chloe realized.

"I'm gonna lose my fairies for sure!" Timmy cried at exactly the same moment. When Chloe looked at him, he lowered his clenched fists and glanced away. "Aaand there's that."

With a _poof_ and a shower of glittery dust, Poof transformed into a purple puppy with an oversized nose and drooping ears. He placed his snout against the ground and began to walk, sniffing as he went. Watching each other's backs, Timmy and Chloe followed him through the door marked with _Keep Out_ and _This means you, Mother!_ signs. Poof circled the room once, even walking across the keyboard of Crocker's computer, before he dropped to the ground and disappeared under Crocker's bed. He backed out again, clenching a rope between his teeth. Timmy and Chloe ran to join him. With a great yank, they wrenched open a trapdoor.

"Trapdoor," Poof said smugly, letting the rope drop. He turned into a fairy again with a _poof_.

Timmy dropped to his knees and peered beneath the bed. A spider crawled out from the dingy depths and scurried into a knot in the floorboards. "Yeah, I noticed. Finley really went this way?"

"Yeah. Look, he even started leaking a bit of dust."

"That's not good."

"Why'd he snap and run like that?" Chloe asked, sliding her legs underneath. Her foot patted around for the hole. Finding it, she reached out with her other one. "Well, fly?"

"Duh. He knows we're gonna take him back to work. No one wants to go to work."

Chloe's bare heel bumped against what felt like a giant Plexiglas tube. The kind you'd let a hamster run around in, if hamsters were roughly the size of broad-shouldered pianos. Unease trickled along her spine and continued up the nape of her neck. She could smell sawdust and new paint. "Well, we've come this far. I ain't no quits-a-lot quitter."

"That's the spirit." Timmy wormed his way beneath the bed on his stomach. Together, he and Poof poked their heads through the trapdoor. Then they looked at each other.

"Deep?" Chloe asked, still feeling around with her feet.

"Uh… I'm sure we'll be fine. But just in case, I wish all three of us had an emergency button we could use to _poof_ home."

"I can try," Poof said with a twinge of doubt edging his voice. He gave his rattle a shake. With three consecutive _poof_ s, three buttons attached to three wristbands like watches appeared on three wrists. Timmy inspected his arm, then nodded.

"That works. Although I kind of like it better when it looks like a pen."

"Sorry," Poof grumbled. "I'm hoping they work at all once we leave Dimmsdale. Pixie World is pretty far."

"Well. Let's go."

They plunged.

The fall was a whirl. Chloe took the first turn of the tube slide fast enough to smack her face. Static shocks fired each time she passed a metal bolt, frizzing her hair. Poof was ahead of her, Timmy behind. All three of them cheered and yelled, arms waving as they whipped left and right and even upside down. How long was this secret entrance anyway? And could they ride it again?

"Well," Chloe said, "I guess we're not going back that way."

Finally they broke into empty space. Poof hit the ground first and instantly _poof_ ed into a mattress. Chloe bounced on top of him and rolled away. Timmy crashed after her. Sitting up, shaking out their dizziness, they examined their new surroundings.

"Aw…" Poof held up two chunks of striped sugar. "You broke my candy cane."

"Probably for the best, buddy."

"Still. _Poof_ ed-up ones don't taste as good as the real thing."

Still a greenhorn to the whole "Crocker actually carved out or at least inherited an underground lair beneath the city" concept, Chloe took a little more time to study some of the weirder details through the dark. The floor the three of them sat on gleamed like cold metal. Crude drawings of stick figures with wands, wings, and floating crowns were pinned to every blue wall, side by side with dozens of photos that she could tell were too blurry to convince anyone of anything even from here.

High-tech-looking desks lined the walls on her left, the enormous computer monitors off but the fans whirring and lights blinking. Random tools lay across the floor- wrenches, glue guns, a sledgehammer, a torn-up pair of headphones, some scuba equipment, and a few items that Chloe couldn't even recognize. Which was alarming, since DIY was sort of her thing.

"Exactly how much was Crocker making teaching us all this time? My parents couldn't even afford half of this stuff." That kind of money always want to exotic and endangered animal conservations in obscure countries on the other side of the globe, or to a pair of tickets for trips around the world, which was, y'know, fine.

Poof raised one finger. "It's an interesting story, actually, that surprisingly has less to do with the frozen timestream than you might expect-"

"Hold that thought." Timmy walked over to a sagging sack of cat food, above which was a handwritten sign that read _Power Chower_ , with an arrow pointing down. He frowned, holding his flashlight close to a mark on the bag itself. "Where have I seen this symbol before?"

"That's the state of Idaho, Timmy."

"Maybe… But you can't be too careful with Crocker."

Chloe turned to scan the wall behind them. Oh. Apparently there was also a staircase that probably led straight upstairs too. Where did that come out? The kitchen? Kevin had invited her and Timmy over for movies and snacks only once, and for some hazy reason, Chloe was having a hard time remembering the layout of the house any more than she could remember Timmy's.

"Which way do you think Finley went?"

Both Poof and Timmy pointed to the wall opposite the stairs. Two narrow openings, not much more than cracks in the wall leaking some dangerous-looking wires, stood on either side of a filing cabinet with its drawers yanked open and overflowing. A trail of sparkling blue dust snaked through the leftmost entryway.

"Ah. Dorky me."

The three of them slipped into the corridor. It widened only a few yards in. Still, they didn't get very far before the metal walls and floor that signified Crocker's domain had morphed into damp brown rock. Timmy swept his flashlight back and forth, checking for small animals and obvious traps. There didn't seem to be any. Just glittery blue dust. Not all of it was on the floor. Bits of it hung in the air, hovering at just the right height for a fleeing pixie. Even so, when their path split into two, Chloe decided to run a test.

"Finley?" Chloe shouted down the tunnel. He took the bait. In response, she got a low, dry scream.

"That's our cue!" Timmy grabbed Chloe's hand and charged. "Don't let him get away!"

"Stay away, you circus freaks! My dad gave me this power because it's my one chance to feel _normal!_ I'm not just your teleport link to a free ride. How many years will it take everyone to realize that?"

After about seven minutes of sorta-jogging sorta-walking in that weird sorta-urgent way, Chloe swore she could make out the sound of rushing water overhead. Their feet began to splash through puddles.

"We're under the beach," Timmy confirmed.

A stone settled in Chloe's gut. "So uh, would a high tide flood us out of this place at the right time of day? Or…"

"I'm sure engineering a way around that problem was Crocker's first order of business. I mean, he wouldn't store all his tech down here and let it just get soaked every day."

"I guess."

Three minutes of walking later, the walls became solid concrete, like those you might find in a sewer system or parking garage. Two minutes after that, they turned to pale, polished stone with veins of glittery purple running through them and tons of chisel marks all around. And only one minute later, they ended up back in the main room again. They'd walked a full loop. They hadn't even come out the second cracked entryway, but instead left from the same entrance they'd gone into. Chloe glanced around, checking the posters and computer monitors again to silently confirm it.

"Huh. That was anticlimactic."

Poof muttered some gibberish and clenched the head of his rattle. "That's not what the path looked like the last time I was here. Geez. The layers of stinky magic buildup in this place are awful. Something magical has _definitely_ been living around here, and for a long time too."

"You mean like, captured Fairies?" Chloe asked.

"Witches. Oodles of them. See, in school-"

Before she could question what he meant by that, Timmy's roaming flashlight beam settled on a lump of red tucked in the corner of the room, between a filing cabinet and something large covered in a tarp or quilt. "There."

Finley screamed immediately. Leaping to his feet, he fled towards the stairs, then tripped over a sledgehammer and landed flat on his face. Apparently, he had forgotten that he could fly.

"Finley!" Chloe started to run after him, only for Timmy to grab her by the wrist and yank her back.

"Hang on."

Finley sat up, wiping his face with his gaping red sleeve. His arms trembled. He didn't try to stand. "It's t-too bright, guys. Turn it down."

"Dude." Poof pointed at his forehead. "You do realize you've got sunglasses. They've gotta be good for something, or else they wouldn't be in the standard Pixie dress code."

Timmy turned off his flashlight even so. They could still see Finley perfectly. He was outlined in blue and sparking with more crimson than a Valentine's Day box of chocolates, after all. The pixie didn't seem particularly, er… stable by this point. He was drooling at the mouth, his neck jerking a bit and fingers twitching up and down as though he were typing three different essays on different laptops at once.

"Ohh. I'm s-s-s-so overloaded on coffee and Fairy magic right now…"

"Fin?" Chloe reached out her hand. Still holding Timmy, she started to walk around one of the worktables towards him. "We don't want to hurt you. We're friends of Poof's. Your roommate."

Finley curled up where he sat, holding his mittens over his ears. They'd grown twice as large as his actual head. His Santa coat had swelled too. It rippled like one of those giant dancing fan monsters you found outside grocery stores and car dealerships. "S-stay away from me!"

His voice came out in a high-pitched rattle, like a deflating balloon darting around a room. "Oh no," Timmy said.

"Finley!" Poof flew forward, waving his arms. "Cast it! You're suffering magical back-up!"

"I don't know how to grant a wish," Finley protested as he swelled even larger.

"It's not technically a wish, or I would have said 'Grant it.' It's a spell and you _cast_ it, but-"

"Hit the deck!" Timmy screamed. He grabbed Poof's hand and yanked him out of the air. He and Chloe dove behind a workbench, and Timmy flipped it over. Then he shoved Chloe's head against the floor and covered his own. His elbows bore into her back. The swelling grew, almost noisy like a rumbling train-

Then there was a thunderclap of rustling paper and party blowers. A wind stormed around them out of nowhere. Blueprints ripped from beneath paperweights on Crocker's desks and posters fluttered on the walls. Chloe clung to Timmy's leg and groped for Poof's tiny hand. He squirmed against her, his wings fluttering like mad. When the whirlwind died down, the three of them poked their heads above the bench again. Finley had disappeared, but the Crocker Cave was now glowing with splatters of sticky blue goop in all directions. Other than the glowing goop, all that remained of Finley were shreds of paper-mâché in a pile on the floor. A tiny pair of smudged shades rested on top of it.

Chloe's hand went to her mouth. "Holy _cow_! He just exploded!" Slapping her hands along her pajama pants, she shouted, "Poof, what's the Fairy equivalent of 911?"

Poof placed his hand on her shoulder. "Humans don't have the right symbols on their keypads to contact Fairy phones, C.C."

"Wish him back, wish him back!" Chloe fell to her knees and started to hyperventilate. "We're gonna do time in Fairy jail for baby murder! By default, I confess guilty to every charge! It was me, in the Crocker Cave, just before midnight, with all the magic!"

"Chloe-"

"No," she wailed, "go without me! Just let me suffer in peace. I've embraced my fate. I'll hold them off while I still can."

"He's gonna be fine," Timmy reassured her, dumping out a box of tiny screws and nails on the floor. Crouching down, he started to sweep Finley's remains inside. "He's just going through magical backup. Happens to Cosmo and Wanda all the time. Well, not _all_ the time, but sometimes when I give them a break from granting wishes they do this. They absorb magic from the energy field around them and if they don't get rid of it the right way, then they explode."

Chloe wiped her jitters away. "H-how do we help him?"

Timmy stared into the box for a second or two. "Uh. Granting a wish right afterwards usually does the trick, but Finley doesn't even have a wand. So I… I dunno. I think they can pull themselves together if we take them to a place where the energy field isn't too thick and clogged up. Remember how when you were first getting used to magic, your arms were breaking out all the time like you'd just gotten bit by a thousand mosquitoes?" Absently, he scratched his shoulder. "Yeah. That's because Dimmsdale is full of magic. We're right by the Rainbow Bridge and stuff. There are some places where the field isn't this heavy."

"So can we fix him or can't we?"

Poof gave his rattle a sad shake. It wilted in the process. "Sorry. This one's outside my jurisdiction. I'm only authorized to _poof_ back Mom or Dad. Fin isn't covered under our insurance plan. There'd be some problems. I think only pixies know how pixies fit together anyway."

Timmy shrugged. "If he's not better soon, we'll just have to get Cosmo or Wanda to _poof_ him someplace else tomorrow. Maybe Jersey City. I've heard Rio's nice this time of year. Or maybe Cosmo and Wanda can just wish him back to normal. Whatevs. Anyway, I think it helps if we keep all his… parts in one place. So I'm doing that."

Steadying her breathing, Chloe came around the table and joined him in his cleaning, trying not to think so hard about _what_ she was touching. The bits that had been Finley were cold and damp like newspapers coated in glue. Could he feel this? Was he unconscious or awake? Did this count as abusing a minor? She focused instead on what he looked like, all the different shades of gray, purple, violet, lavender, eyeball-

"Eep!" Chloe dropped Finley's eye into the pile of paper-mâché and hastily wiped her fingers clean on her pajamas.

"That's the last of him." Timmy set the box aside and stood up, patting himself down for pockets. Finding his flashlight, he flicked it on and pointed it around the Crocker Cave. It glittered against the blue goo speckling the metal walls. He sniffed. "Man. It's darker down here than I remember. Less dusty and covered in spiders and robot parts, but still dark. Of course, I haven't been down here since a few mishaps with Sparky, so…"

"Wait…" Poof drifted away from them, clenching and unclenching his fists as he followed the beam. "Oh, no _way_. He still has this?"

"What is it?" Chloe asked, inching away from Finley's mangled parts.

"Duh," Timmy said. "This is a box."

Poof hovered in front of the lumpy mass covered by a pink and white flower-print quilt. With a few mighty tugs, he yanked the sheet away to reveal a huge metal… contraption. It looked sort of like a big animatronic spider fused with a kiddie ride rocket. Like the kind you might find just inside a grocery store. In fact, this rocket looked suspiciously like the one Chloe had been told used to stand in the empty, cluttered spot just inside the grocery store. It had a long dent across its side and an orange splatter logo and everything.

The sheet dropped to the floor. Poof traced his hand up the side of the machine in perfect awe. "Whoa. Dudes, I thought Jorgen _destroyed_ this thing after he fired those goons through the wall of my school. He was so mad. All this time, I thought the fastest way to get to Fairy World if you couldn't _poof_ was taking the bus. My class got to take a field trip down here to see this baby once… But only once."

"You did?" Timmy asked with a jerk of his head. Poof winked at him.

"Hey, you don't know everything about me. We spent a whole two months last semester on famous fairy hunters and the dangers of adults getting their hands on our magic. Oh, wow. This oughta be in a museum after the trouble it got them into. We Fairies call it the Last Grand Hurrah. Guess you can never count ol' Denzel Senior down and out." Spinning around, Poof grinned. "I might not have the magic to get us to Pixie World, but this puppy sure does. This is our ticket. Let's go find us a great gift! We can drop Fin off in H.P.'s lap on the way."

Chloe inspected the buttons, switches, dials, displays, and widgets along the side of the awkward machine. One of them said 'Pixie World', so she rotated the point of the dial until it clicked into place. "How does it work?"

"Like this, I think. Don't stand on that X over there." Poof jammed his thumb into an absolutely massive red button in the cockpit of the kiddie rocket. It didn't descend. He looked at the button in astonishment, then smacked it again with both his fists as hard as he possibly could. That did the trick. Or at least, it did _something_. The machine shuddered to life. A thin trail of smoke began to leak out from under the button. A blade whirred somewhere and a generator hummed. Thin bolts of blue electricity danced between a pair of twisted spires. Chloe backed away, although Timmy and Poof remained rooted where they were. Poof only grinned like a Fair Bear with a house of cards.

The shoots of electricity grew longer. They sparked at the bottoms of the spires and flowed to the top, leaping back and forth. With a sputter and a flash, a purple vortex of crashing energy appeared on the floor in front of them in a little square door. It wasn't a very tall door, kind of like one you'd find on a kids' playhouse. Except this one was accented with occasional blasts of lightning instead of being made from hollow plastic. Subtle difference.

Chloe couldn't help but be impressed. "Wow. Nice box. So this can really get us to Pixie World? How'd you know that would work, Poof?"

"I guessed," he said cheerfully.

"You do realize that could've been a self-destruct button and you could've just obliterated us all off the face of the earth."

"But I didn't! Sometimes you've just gotta take a crazy, uncalculated risk." Poof pointed to his temple and gave it two taps. "A big dummy uses this head, remember? An absolute dunce."

Timmy hadn't moved a single muscle since Poof had pointed out the portal. Now he glanced down at a sledgehammer by his foot. "Yeah. Yeah, this is… great. You know, we could probably piece something together with all the stuff Crocker's got lying around in here."

"Uh…" Chloe squinted again at the options around the dial she'd moved to Pixie World. "So, should we be concerned that one of these says 'Spellementary School'?"

Poof hesitated. "Nah. Nah, that's… not important. Don't worry about it. And don't tell my parents."

Timmy lifted a finger. "One of these also says 'Fairy Froyo.' Shouldn't we nip this whole operation in the roots before Crocker causes some real damage?"

"And this one says 'Anti-Cosmo's Castle.' Who's Anti-Cosmo?"

At that moment, the sounds of whoops and cheers rocketing down the transport tube echoed down to them like storming hail. "Tiny gray urchin, I hail you with sound advice! Just play dead and the Earth children will run away frothing at the throats!"

"Hammerfall, this is not an approved extracurricular activity! You didn't even ask for a hall pass!"

"For the love of all things smoky, _my eyes!_ They still burn from the savage light rays of that garbage-gobbling trash-head. Never clean! Never pure! I'll be needing transplanted monkey opticals if I ever wish to see again. Weep weep, sobbing loudly!"

Poof glanced over his shoulder, then shoved both Timmy and Chloe towards the swirling portal. "That's our cue. No more questions. Go, go, go! Move, soldiers, move!"

Timmy did not go. Instead, he dug his heels into the floor. Confused, Poof pulled away. Timmy picked up the sledgehammer lying near his foot. He looked at the portal and bit his lip. "Let's, uh… maybe not take any chances with this."

"I'm with you there," Chloe said, looking around for something else to hit it with.

" _NO!"_ Poof lunged forward, ramming Timmy with his tiny shoulder. Timmy fell back. The hammer swung from his hand and dropped against the floor, nearly capsizing Finley's box in the process. "Poof," Chloe cried, "what's gotten into you?"

Timmy wrenched Poof from his face and held him out at arms' length. "Seriously, buddy, I love you, but you've gotta calm down before you start saying just 'Poof poof' again."

"Timmy!" Poof was sobbing now. "Leave it alone!"

"What? Why? Hello?" Timmy bounced the flailing kid (gently) up and down. "Crocker's still got a full-fledged working portal in the Crocker Cave, and you just wanna leave it down here?"

"Yes! Don't tell my parents!"

Timmy's gaze shifted to Chloe, wide and blue. Then it went down again. "I'm not always going to be around to watch your back, buddy…"

"Poof." Chloe tried to keep her voice very calm. "Why does Crocker know your last name?"

Poof's eyes darted to the entry tube overhead. Crocker's, Foop's, and Dark Laser's voices were more distinct now, along with Kevin's high-pitched wail behind them. Then his gaze shot to Timmy again. He squared his wings. "I- I don't wanna say it. It'll make you worry about me. But you really shouldn't worry, because it's okay! I have it under control! I- I made a deal. A good deal."

Timmy's eye began to twitch. He jerked his hands, squirming and struggling and muttering gibberish under his breath. Desperately, Poof spun around to Chloe.

"Don't tell my dad and mama about this. They'll freak out if they find out I've been hanging around with Mr. Crocker. Just please, you have to believe me. Give him a chance! I can change him! I know he's good inside."

Chloe opened her mouth. No words came out. She stammered. She tried.

She couldn't. Crocker was as crafty as he was kooky. Sure, Chloe was all for not judging people before she got to know them too well, but Crocker was one of those people who really came with a convenient disclaimer attached. All she could do was bend down and take Finley's box into her arms.

"Timmy," Poof whimpered. "Please don't. He really needs this. He needs me. I've been getting through."

Quietly, Timmy hugged his godbrother and squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm trusting you on this one, Poof." Before Chloe could make a final decision herself, Timmy grabbed both her and Poof by the backs of their collars and pushed them through the swirling purple vortex. "Let's just get this over with," he muttered. And then he said, "Oh, wow."

Chloe had expected the buildings scraping against the sky. She'd expected the gray and purple color scheme. She'd even expected the crowds. There were no cars in sight, but the whole street was blocked off with fairy-sized roadblocks and the occasionally Santa-dressed pixie. Appropriately, too. Tons of Fairies, Anti-Fairies, and some creatures that Chloe wasn't even sure about hurried around in all directions, their wings whirring and their floating shopping bags zigzagging after them. Their ages ranged from teenagers to some Fairies who actually looked elderly. There were even a few godkids from around the world, some in pajamas and others cheerily darting around in bright and sunny regular clothes. Why did godkids hie to Pixie World and spend their night shopping when they had fairies who were supposed to be able to grant them all the desires of their heart? Was it really that cool to buy nonmagical stuff? Were they after toys and trinkets that Da Rules, for whatever reason, prevented their godparents from wishing up? Huh.

So the crowds weren't much of a surprise. What _hadn't_ she expected? Not the neon lights hanging in almost every window. Not the bridal gowns and prom dresses set out for display on adorable little mannequins. Not the pixie children tearing down the sidewalks, splashing each other with bursts of blue and giggling all the while. And especially not the taste of the air. A bright, bubbly, zippy tang filled her entire mouth from front to back, like fruitcake flambée, or every soft drink from a restaurant dispenser mixed in a single cup. Something with three dozen different flavors that hit her brain all at once.

"Poof," Timmy stuttered out when he found his voice again. "I wish a giant hippopotamus was blocking the portal so no one else from Crocker's house can get through. And make it bright orange and super cranky just for fun."

Poof tapped his rattle against his hand a few times, then gave it a mighty swing. _Poof!_ It was only a few seconds later that they heard the startled shrieks of their pursuers arriving in the Crocker Cave behind them. Chloe stayed at the ready, knowing full well that although Foop couldn't _poof_ ( _anti-poof_?) the hippo away directly, nothing was stopping him from _poof_ ing up some yummy hippo treats or something else that might frighten it away.

"I can't see! I'm still bliiiiind!"

"Kevin, hand over your glasses. I'm confiscating them under protocol practices."

"Uncle Denzel, now I can't see."

"Watch where you three flesh bags are pushing. You're making this needlessly difficult for all of us. You almost knocked into Flipsie."

Well. Maybe they had a little bit of time after all.

"So this is Pixie World on holiday," Timmy grunted, shoving his hair back with both hands. He adjusted his hat. "Could've fooled me."

Chloe scanned the city streets around them. She clutched Finley's box to her chest. "Aha! That warehouse over there by the docks where those flying boats are tied up. That's where everyone else is going."

Poof jabbed his finger into the sky at an angle. "And look up there. On the skyscraper."

When Chloe looked up at one of the nearby buildings, she couldn't believe that the Fairies flowing around the warehouse had been the first thing she'd noticed. Three figures stood-slash-floated beneath a massive vortex of bright blue energy that spun overhead like a rip in the sky. The first figure was obviously in charge of the operation. He wore thick, owlish glasses instead of shades, but like Finley, he was clad in a red Santa outfit with white gloves and a big black belt to match his shining boots. But this pixie was much, much bigger than Finley, even from across the street. And he actually had a Santa hat with a dangling tail and a white puffball on the end to match his suit. He stood at the edge of the building, both hands lifted towards the vortex as though in prayer. Crackling energy spiraled from his shoulders to his fingertips and flowed from him into the vortex like a waterslide. Two smaller figures hovered to either side. One had the square head and red suit of a pixie, but Chloe didn't recognize the one who was all blue from pointed ears and floating hat down to the tails of his coat.

"The Head Pixie?" she guessed. Poof nodded.

"Yeah, but we usually just call him H.P. He's Finley's boss, and kind of like his grandpa too, I guess?"

Chloe squinted. "That little soapbox counts as a skyscraper?"

"Hey, we're Fairies. We're short, we already live above the clouds, we don't need much ventilation, and we can build with magical materials instead of steel beams that take up lots of space. To us, that's a skyscraper."

"He's channeling way more Fairy magic than I remember," Timmy murmured. He pressed his hand against his cheek. "Okay. Earth boy who plays for the Fairies' team not liking this. At all."

Poof tapped Chloe on the shoulder. "Fun Fact: You can tell it's Fairy magic because our magic's all round and swirly, but spiky at the edges like a star. Anti-Fairy magic in the visible spectrum looks like lightning, and Pixie magic is more like pixels and blocks that fade in and out in funky patterns, like it's glitched out. Today, the Pixies aren't channeling magic internally like they usually do. There's too much Fairy magic for that. They can't store it inside them, which means they have to keep letting it out even if they'd rather save it for later. So basically it's suuuper unstable in their hands. Sometimes there's so much that they drop it and it engulfs them. Then they explode."

"Kind of like…" Chloe took a moment to think up an appropriate simile. "Like holding a really, really tall stack of clothes in their arms instead of wearing them? If they don't get rid of it and people keep adding more clothes, it'll fall over? And explode?"

"Yeah!" Poof shook his rattle at nothing in particular. "Exactly like that. Basically, we should be worried because the secret little tricks that usually deflect Pixie magic, like turning your clothes inside out, won't save you here. But we don't have to be too worried, because pretty much the only ones who specialize in combat magic are Anti-Fairies. Y'know, with beams and lasers and stuff. Regular Fairy magic is more like _poof_ ing stuff up and _poof_ ing it away again. In conclusion, we will _probably_ not get shot directly today. Maybe smashed under something heavy that someone _poof_ s up, but not shot."

Chloe shielded her eyes, staring into the whirlwind. Then, before either of the boys could stop her, she took off across the street, waving one arm above her head. "Hey! I have your pixie! Yoo-hoo!"

She screamed it pretty loudly, but still, Chloe wasn't sure that H.P. heard her above the noises of the Gray Tuesday crowds and sparking vortex… until not only did his head swivel towards her, but he lowered one of his hands and held the palm of his mitten in her direction. Automatically, Chloe stopped. Then she had to spring back. A coil of energy whipped around his arm and blasted at her. It shifted from a beam of light into a storm of wrapped packages, gift cards, and packing peanuts, and everything rained down on her head as she tried to scramble away.

Timmy wasn't nearly so lucky. Once he and Poof had yanked her behind a rack of villainous-looking black capes out for display on the sidewalk, he rubbed the back of his neck. "Ow. Who fights with cardboard boxes?"

"He's shooting at us!" she screamed, clutching Finley's box of remains to her chest. "Why the hey's he shooting at us?"

"Duh." Timmy waved vaguely past her head. "The magical overload is making him go bonkers. He's mad with power."

Chloe risked a peek between the capes on the rack, making a mental note to investigate them more closely if they could spare the time, because they were neat and she really wanted one. H.P. had both arms raised above his head again. His legs and wings were shaking more than a little, as though he were holding up the sky and his knees might crumple beneath the pressure any second. The anti-fairy beside him wore a floating blue bowler hat instead of the usual black crown. He stared at the rack with his fangs bared in a glistening grin. In the back of her mind, Chloe thought that with those searing green eyes, he looked a lot like Cosmo.

The anti-fairy aimed his wand at them…

Until the Head Pixie, quite simply, lunged at him, grabbed the wand in his mouth, and flew away along the roof- vortex, apparently, forgotten for now. The other pixie with him didn't even react.

 _"No!"_ The anti-fairy dove after him. He caught H.P.'s shoulders and spun him around. Then he wrenched on the wand with all the strength he had, his wings beating like a distressed, well… bat. "Ooh, give over, you lunatic!"

Growling, the Head Pixie yanked backwards, teeth still latched around the wand.

"Look down there, old sport!" The anti-fairy threw out his finger. "It's Timothy Turner, and his little friend too."

"Oh, come on," Timmy complained, ducking behind the rack of capes again. Abruptly, the Head Pixie released the wand. When he turned, his entire face lit up.

"Turner! You made it!"

The anti-fairy pinched his temples with thumb and forefinger. He dangled his wand away from his body. "Here we go."

The Head Pixie landed on their side of a street with a skip in his step. He moved _way_ too fast for Chloe's comfort, like a spark travelling along a wire in a cartoon. "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh," Timmy warned, backing away and shaking his hands. It didn't matter. H.P. tackled him in a hug. Chloe prepared to enact self-defensive measures, but it didn't seem to be necessary. The worst the Head Pixie seemed inclined to do was nuzzle Timmy's cheek to death.

"Look at us." Once the anti-fairy landed, H.P. threw his other arm around his shoulders and pulled him in. "We're all together, celebrating the holidays for another year. Does it get any better than this?" He withdrew then, sniffling and flapping his mittened hands at his eyes. "I won't cry. I told myself I wouldn't cry."

Poof floated behind Chloe's shoulder with a repulsed look twisting up his pudgy face. "Whoa. What's up with him?"

"Jolly spirits," the anti-fairy grumbled as H.P. caught him in another group hug. This one knocked his monocle out of place. It bobbed on its cord. The anti-fairy rolled his eyes as H.P. mashed their cheeks together. The microphone of H.P.'s headset scraped and stuttered. "He's always like this on Gray Tuesday. One of these years, I shall succeed in reeling him in."

The young fairy tapped his cheek. "I will make a note of that for my fanfics and purposely use this information totally out of context just for a laugh at your expense."

"Aww, you know I can't stay mad at any of you," the Head Pixie cooed, walking his fingers up Anti-Cosmo's chest. Despite the microphone, there weren't any speakers around to pick up his voice. Then, releasing everyone, he flew in a tight circle around Timmy. "What's your weekend wish, then, Turner? Unlimited soggy graham crackers? A Chia Pet shaped like Elvis Presley's coif? An SUV with all its wheels built into its roof?" Each time he listed off a noun, he flapped his hand and made the object appear in a bubble above his head, only to flicker away again. Chloe did not miss the fact that he didn't need a wand to do it.

Timmy grimaced. He turned to follow H.P. every time the pixie moved behind his back. "Yeah. This year, I'm gonna keep my super wish in my back pocket for awhile. No offense, but you never seem to grasp the idea of 'sensible toys for ten-year-old boys.'"

"Eleven," Chloe reminded him.

"That's what I said."

The Head Pixie frowned. He stopped his crazed spiral. Instead, he stuffed his hands away beneath his armpits, leaning slightly forward. "Oh. Wow. I see how it is. You spend all that time faking my murder a few decades back, and now you don't even want to talk to me."

Timmy rolled his eyes. "I did not murder you! I didn't even fake-murder you."

"Who are you, anyway?" Chloe finally blurted, sick of referring to the anti-fairy as "the extremely good-looking British anti-fairy" in her head.

The anti-fairy glanced first at H.P. as though he expected the pixie to seize the lead. When H.P. didn't, he instead leaned back in the air and waved his hand. The other arm went behind his neck. "I, child, am Anti-Cosmo, High Count of the Anti-Fairies. The name alone ought to drop you to your knees so you may tremble for mercy at your leisure. I am, of course, the far more evil, dastardly, _and_ utterly brilliant counterpart of the man I believe to be your own fairy godfather."

Chloe tried to resist the urge to fangirl squee. "O-oh," she managed. "You're Foop's dad. That's actually incredibly adorable. I always thought he was spawned out of the pits of pain and suffering or something."

"He was," Timmy assured her.

"Well, I see where he gets the accent from now."

Anti-Cosmo's fist clenched in empty air. "Yes. Aha. 'Foop's dad.' What a charming title to be greeted by. Anyhow." He flicked his wand to indicate the Head Pixie, who had crouched down to tie the shoes that Poof hadn't bothered to lace up properly. Poof did not seem to know how to react to this. "You see, child, H.P. and I have a longstanding partnership that stretches back for many millennia. And tonight, we've teamed up to cause the ultimate Friday mayhem! Ooh, Black Friday the 13th never looked so evil before!"

"But it's Gray Tuesday," Timmy said, staring up at him. Chloe lifted a finger.

"And, uh, due to the way the calendar works, Mr. Anti-Cosmo sir, there's no conceivable way Friday the 13th and Black Friday could ever fall on the same day anyway."

"Hmm." Anti-Cosmo studied the back of his hand, then flipped it over to examine his palm. "Must be a leap year."

"That doesn't actually…"

Anti-Cosmo kicked the Head Pixie beneath one of his wings. "Destroy them."

"They're paying customers," H.P. protested, sitting back on his heels.

"I don't care! Timothy always ruins our plans! Stop him! Stop him now!"

H.P. shrugged and turned on them, raising his arms. His mittens sparked with red. On auto-pilot, Chloe lashed out with her bare foot. It connected with his chin in a great karate kick so hard, she legitimately knocked out one of the Head Pixie's teeth. Everybody gasped. The tooth clacked to the sidewalk in a small spray of yellow blood.

"I'm sorry," Chloe blurted. "It was an accident!"

The Head Pixie touched the edge of his mouth. The cowlicked pixie who had followed him from the skyscraper fell into a crouch, his arms aglitter with blue swirls of Fairy magic. Poof floated backwards, covering his mouth too. "Oh no," he said through his fingers. "Chloe. Chloe. Chlo-Chlo, I love you, but you did _not_ just do that. You're new here, but you _can't_ do that. He's the Head Pixie."

"Yeah?"

"So his blood is full of pheromones!" Poof shoved her and Timmy forward by the backs of their heads. "Pixies are like wasps, and they swarm and _kill_ when they smell that their leader is hurt! Run! _Run!"_

"Ow," the Head Pixie muttered, rubbing his hand against his cheek. "That smarts."

Anti-Cosmo's patience snapped right then. He whipped out his wand. It crackled with sparks, then went limp in his hand. He brandished it nonetheless. _"Get them!_ Quick! They're getting away!"

As Timmy, Chloe, and Poof bolted down the street, pushing and ducking and "Excuse me"-ing around flying Fairies and other magical beings, Timmy made claw motions with his hands. "Why does this seem to happen to me and me alone _every single year?"_

"It was an accident!" Chloe shouted, clutching Finley's box with both arms. Oops. She'd forgotten about that. Would H.P. even want to talk to her again?

"I know it was, I know! Calm down, shh, shh, don't tell Cosmo and Wanda." As they ran, Timmy caught her elbow. "We'll be fine, but we have to be fast. The swarm instinct won't kick in unless the pixies smell that H.P. is bleeding. We can still get in, buy what we need, and get out before they stop us."

"Why do the Fairies give up their magic on Gray Tuesday to people like that?" Chloe asked, grabbing Poof in one hand and tossing him over a low-flying shopping cart. She caught him in the box, and they raced into the neon sparkly-topia of the massive warehouse. Despite it being not long after midnight, the crowds were in full Gray Tuesday spirit, shouting at one another and pushing each other around.

"They have to. I think it's in Da Rules." Timmy ducked a thrown boot and kept running. His hat flew off his head; Chloe grabbed it and clenched it in her fist. Timmy shot a glance back over his shoulder, arms ablur. His cowlick streamed impressively behind the rest of his hair. "The pixies don't get to participate in the annual bake-off to decide who gets to have the human godchildren, so they get this instead, or something."

"The annual what to determine the fate of who?"

"No time!" Timmy grabbed the rack of postcards and knocked it behind them. Chloe almost skidded in the mess. She hadn't even realized how close the cowlicked pixie was behind her until the shelf caught him in the forehead, and he fell back with a grunt. "Running now! Poof, I wish we were in the analog clock section!"

 _Tick tock poof!_ Chloe felt her feet rip themselves away from the ground. In a matter of seconds, they came down again with a solid thud.

"Okay. Okay." Timmy was choking on the cloud of dust that signaled their successful arrival, but he kept talking anyway. "Here's the plan. I'm gonna get Jorgen a really, really big watch that'll actually fit on his giant hand. Fairy clocks are cool because cloudland quartz is magical I guess and these clocks automatically adjust for time zones when you cross over. They're not that great on Earth because they're set to Fairy time zones, but whatever. I have one, but it's small. Jorgen's big, but we can't use magic to make a small watch bigger, because I need him to think I actually put time and effort into this and that I care about how much he likes it. So!" He pointed upwards. "We're gonna pry the face out of a grandfather clock, and use actual tools - not magic - to attach it to a big belt. We'll find one of those somewhere in this place. As soon as we get the stuff and find any pixie floating around here who has the authority to check our payment, we can leave."

Chloe blinked at all the neon lights spinning and pulsing around them. She'd only been here three seconds and the uneven _tick, tick_ sounds were already grating on her nerves. Her fingers itched to tear every clock apart and set them to precisely the right time. In fact, before she could stop herself, she picked a small clock that looked like it would sit on the back of an oven and flipped it over in her palm. "Creative, but are you sure Jorgen will actually like that?"

Timmy pointed finger guns at her and slid them back and forth. "Imagination is kind of my thing waaay more than practicality is. Now, let's hurry and find a-"

"Not so fast, Timmy Turner!" crowed a young British voice. This was followed by the horrifying stomp of a very large animal's heavy feet. Chloe set down the clock. In slow motion, she and Timmy turned towards the other end of the aisle. Then they grabbed each other's arms and screamed.

 _"Ahhhhh!"_

Poof's eyes bulged. "How and _when_ did you get that inside?"

"Yes! Yes!" Cackling like a madder man than he probably actually was, Foop flew above the shelves, heels kicked up behind him and fists thrust in the air. "Bow down to me, you pathetic human idiots! Or else I shall be forced to crush you under the heels of my mighty persimmon amphibious wrecking ball of chaotic _**doom!**_ _Ahahahaha!"_

Chloe threw Timmy a jagged look. "You just couldn't resist the giant hippo wish, could you?"

He crossed his arms. "Hey, you didn't argue then. Did you have a better way to block the portal door without destroying it and upsetting Poof?"

"Fingerprint scanners! Always go for the fingerprint scanners!"

"But that's so overplayed."

"Guys." Poof fired a blast of yellow energy with his wand, knocking Foop out of the air. The anti-fairy spun backwards and landed with a plop on top of Dark Laser and Crocker, who were weaving around the hippo's legs. Dark Laser was still decked out in his glowing rave gear, and Crocker was examining the price tag of a very stylish black toupee (Kevin stumbling blindly after them). "Hey, we really don't have time to argue about this."

"Hold my dead pixie. I got this." Chloe shoved Finley's box into Timmy's arms. She took a running start and drove her foot into the nearest grandfather clock. It doubled over in the middle. The clock face popped out and fell into her hands.

Timmy's mouth fell open. "Did you just punch the face straight out of a clock? Is that a thing? Can you actually do that?"

Chloe looked at him and blurted the only words that came to mind: "I was punching out."

"Well, it worked."

"I'd give that showing a hearty A+" Crocker shouted from the bottom of the heap. With Dark Laser on top of him, he was effectively stuck- just for now. Dark Laser patted the ground frantically for either Flipsie or his lightstick. Foop's jaw was even more slack than Timmy's.

"Remind me never to end up on the receiving end of your killer hooves."

"Thanks. Let's just get this out of here before-"

"Behind you!" Poof yelped. He shoved Chloe away by the shoulder just as a pixie pounced at her from a higher shelf. Poof went down like a football player. Was that the same pixie they'd seen with H.P. and Anti-Cosmo outside, or had the smell of blood started to spread?

The pixie was easily as big as she was, but Chloe grabbed him around the middle anyway and hoisted him above her head. He was actually a lot lighter than he looked, but then again, that seemed to be a thing with magic people. "Get off him!" she yelled, and bodyslammed the pixie to the floor.

"Chloe!" Poof flung out his hands. "Don't hurt _more_ pixies. That's literally the worst decision you could make in this situation. Pixies swarm to protect other bleeding pixies too, not just their boss. You're cutting the heads off a hydra here!"

When the pixie backflipped to his feet, Chloe grabbed his wrists and forced him away from her. His teeth snapped shut too near her cheek for comfort. She'd expected a creature with a square head and square wings to have square teeth to match, but no. Apparently, pointy corners overrode the square gene in their biology. His teeth were longer than a rat's and as pointed as a piranha's. She knew rats and piranhas. "Can't you just _poof_ him away?"

"Oh yeah. I forgot." Poof waved his rattle, and the pixie disappeared in a swirling cloud of dust.

Timmy shook his head and passed Chloe Finley's box. She handed him the clock face. "Here I thought you were going to say that because he's full of all that Fairy magic, his magic is more powerful than yours and you couldn't do anything about him."

"Well, _technically,_ when Santa's done channeling Fairy magic, it knocks him out for the next eleven and a half months. The Head Pixie doesn't like dealing with that smoof, so what he does is split all the power like 350 ways. That way when the day is over and the Pixies give the power back to the Fairies, it's 350 pixies out for one day instead of one pixie out for 350 days. Or just a few hours if he splits it even more. We learned this at school. Finley made us watch the most boring black and white documentary I have ever had to sit through in my _life_. He loved it. So basically, the little pixies aren't too strong, and I'm allowed to use magic outside of school unsupervised if I'm protecting myself or my family. Godsiblings count." Still, Poof grimaced. He tapped his rattle head against his palm. It made shaky, jingly noises like it was full of rice and bells. "Don't get comfortable, though. I could only send him one aisle over. He'll be back soon with friends, I'll bet. And I'm not sure I'd be able to do even that much to H.P. himself."

On cue, a second pixie (or even the same one?) tackled Chloe's legs from behind. Poof waved his rattle and sent him away again, but not before she fell against Timmy and knocked his clock.

"No!" Timmy made a heroic dive forward, catching the clock face just before it hit the ground. Chloe sighed in relief. Timmy sprang back to his feet, grinning like a shark. "Haha! Got it!"

 _BLAM!_

Chloe about jumped out of her pajama pants. Timmy glowed bright blue for an instant and promptly disappeared in a puff of dust. The clock face fell to the floor and bounced on its side. So did the wristwatch-like doohickey Timmy had been wearing that was intended to send him back to Dimmsdale. Apparently it worked. Not far behind where Timmy had been standing, Foop hovered with his bottle outstretched, looking just as surprised about hitting the small button as she was. Poof readied his rattle again. Chloe slunk a step backward.

"Uh, hey, Foop. I see your eyes are doing better. Your new body looks great. Your little vest is absolutely, incredibly fitting."

Poof fired a yellow beam. Foop _poof_ ed away from it and reappeared behind them. While they spun around, he clubbed Poof in the head with his fist. Poof fell to the floor and bounced, firing into the nearby shelf with a startled, "Poof poof!"

Still brandishing his bottle, liquid magic sloshing around inside it, Foop floated forward and scooped the clock up from the ground. He rubbed it against his own head in the same spot where he'd just hit Poof. "I have no idea why this gaudy rubbish is so interesting to you knuckleheaded morons, but if Timmy Turner wanted it, that means I have to have it first."

"Not so fast, Anti-Cosma!" Crocker crowed, shoving him off to the side. The clock face spun around in midair in the place Foop's hand had just been before Crocker snatched it up and yanked it to his beady eyes. The glasses on his nose were clearly too small for him, and this was proved all the more by the blinded Kevin clinging to the hem of his shirt. Still, Crocker leered over the clock as though it were a treasure he'd long been hunting. "Aha! Whatever magical thingamathing is hidden within this fantastic device is sure to bring in more dough than what I'm making teaching impudent little brats now. If nothing else, I'm sure I can use it for a paperweight that actually WORKS AS ADVERTISED."

Then he had to duck as a humming lightstick swung through the air above his head. "Whoa!" Crocker screamed, fumbling the clock between his hands. It skipped back and forth between them, rebounding like an acorn. "I- I mean, _your_ magical thingamathing, of course. My mistake. Byeee."

The clock face bounced from his grip to Dark Laser. Dark Laser couldn't get his lightstick put away in time. The clock rebounded off his forearm and plopped straight into Kevin's hands. Kevin blinked at it. Then he raised his head again. He looked right at Chloe, even with his squinty eyes. His brows went down. He squared his shoulders.

"Uncle Denzel!" he shouted, "Catch!" Taking the clock face like a frisbee, he flung it down the aisle. Chloe dropped Finley's box on the ground just long enough to jump up and snag it from the air. Her shoulder collided with one of the shelves behind her. Did you know that in Pixie World, they sell alarm clocks with real firecracker action? They do! And for only $29.95 during a Gray Tuesday sale! The firecrackers burst alive for seemingly no reason besides being shaken up. They zoomed off the shelves towards the L.O.S.E.R.S., Kevin, and the pixie who had appeared behind them. Foop flew off, shrieking at a high pitch. Or maybe that was Dark Laser. Hard to tell as they all shoved each other around. The Head Pixie's voice crackled over the speakers throughout the warehouse, but the words were garbled.

In all the commotion, Chloe took the chance to dart away. Hugging both the giant clock face and Finley's remains to her chest (gross as that sounded out of context, or even in context), she raced down the warehouse aisles in the opposite direction and took a left, a right, and then another left into an aisle that seemed to be filled with tires and puffy round clouds. Of course, when you're in a dim warehouse lit mainly by neon lights, sometimes it can be difficult to tell.

What had Timmy said? All the pixies dressed in Santa suits had the authority to approve a purchase on Gray Tuesday or something? Well, as long as she found one that didn't want to tear her head off, she should be in a good position.

"I wish I had super-springy anti-gravity boots," she blurted. Nothing happened. When she glanced over her shoulder, Poof was nowhere to be found. Of course that would totally happen. But she did see Foop dart around the corner after her, flailing his bottle at whomever was following behind.

Chloe had only looked back for a single second, but one second was enough. She slammed straight into some kind of topless floating vehicle and fell headfirst into the passenger's seat. Thank goodness she was wearing pajamas with pants instead of her favorite striped nightgown. Her legs were sticking up like chopsticks, and even though she flipped over quickly, that would have been embarrassing. The blue-haired fairy holding a cloudy tire next to the car looked up in surprise. Chloe threw him a smile and situated herself in the driver's seat. "Can I borrow this? Thanks!"

"Um- That's- mine."

The lever labeled 'Up / Down' was already in the 'Up' position. Chloe clicked her seat belt into place (Anything but safety is the worsty worsty worst!), then rammed her foot down on what seemed to be the gas pedal. She burst into the air so fast, she almost fell over backwards. It took a moment of fumbling with the controls, but she managed to guide the hovercar over to the top of the nearest set of shelf. Just in time, too. With three flashes of blue light and three BLAM BLAM BLAMs, Foop plugged the bottom of the hovercar full of holes. Chloe yelped as it tipped on one side. She unfastened her seat belt and sprang out, landing on the bare top of the shelf in a roll. Several of Finley's pieces spilled on top of her.

"Oh, poopie," Foop said as the car came down with a crash on his head.

Chloe crouched on the shelf, holding her hand to her chest as she fought to steady her nerves. The air felt dry and heavy on her tongue and still tasted way too much like fruitcake. Her hands scrambled to find all of Finley's shreds. As she stood up, she spotted Dark Laser (who could apparently hover?) landing on the far end of the shelf. His red lightstick was bared.

"Oh, you've got to be joshing me."

Dark Laser paused from his menacing arrival long enough to squint up his eyes and offer an apologetic smile. He shrugged. "It's nothing personal, Earth child. Flipsie needs a new timer-operated water dish."

"Yep. Bye." Hefting Finley's box against her hip, clock set gently on top of it, Chloe broke into a run. Good news: She'd left her shoes back home, so at least she didn't have to worry about tripping out of them. And apart from the crowds and the dark, everything was going pretty okay.

"Oh no! A sign that warns me about the pit of dangerous marine predators in the tank right below the end of this shelf!"

Huffing, puffing, Chloe glanced over her shoulder. Dark Laser was gaining on her fast, his lightstick expanding into more of a light-trident somehow at the end. It buzzed and flickered, humming as he swung. She had no choice. So at the end of the shelf, she gathered her strength and pushed off.

In a great arc, Chloe sailed over the tank of growling sharks, reaching for the next shelf with her free hand. She'd only be able to catch it with one. She almost-

-made it.

But she didn't.

Chloe stared in horror at her grasping fingertips, more than a foot away from the shelf she'd been trying to catch. And then she plunged towards the sloshing in-ground tank of sharks, walruses, and polar bears.

"Oh no! I- I wish- I was- Poof! Timmy! _Help!"_

She landed in a tiny pair of arms. Her descent didn't halt instantly. She pushed her floating hero down in the air quite a bit, and he yelped when one of the polar bears reared up to snap at his toes. But they _were_ hovering. When Chloe turned her head, she found herself nose to nose with a pair of bright purple eyes.

"Foop. You saved me?"

"Um." His gaze slid away, and his cheeks turned a little purple beneath his fur. Beating his wings like crazy, he swooped away from the shark tank and over solid ground. "I-it was an accident, I swear. I'm really not much of a gentleman. I'm more of a smasher than a grabber. We, um, don't have to tell anyone about this, do we?"

"Not if you give me a five-second head start."

"Oh, fair enough. But I must warn you, I won't let you get away!" He let her drop to the floor. Chloe flipped over in midair, landed in a crouch, and took off instantly. With a _poof_ that spread goosebumps up her arm, the clock face disappeared from Finley's box.

"Hey!"

"Hahaha! See you, Blondie!"

As Chloe started to turn, she ran _smack_ into the puffed-out chest of a certain authority figure, and plopped down on her rear end. She jerked away, expecting to see a pixie, but the leering figure was no pixie. It was an anti-fairy with a blue bowler hat, his right eye clenched around a monocle.

 _"Foop Nebula Anti-Cosma-Anti-Fairywinkle!"_

All of a sudden, Foop broke off his cackling. He pulled back, drawing into himself. One hand clutched his bottle to his chest. The other touched his cheek. "Oh. H-hi, Father. I didn't know you were going to be in Pixie World tonight. Isn't the climate lovely out here?"

Dark Laser, who had just come up behind him, hid his lightstick behind his back. It made his edges flicker with a pale red glow. "Oh, uh… Yes. Salutations, fellow creature of the night."

Even Crocker had joined them, but he ducked away behind another shelf without saying anything.

Smoke puffed in three rings from Anti-Cosmo's ears. He tightened his fangs. Drifting forward on his stomach, his hands clenched into fists, he snapped, "You shed your exoskeleton long enough ago that you've gotten over the swelling and soreness and can fly perfectly well now? And you _didn't even call us?"_

Foop shoved the clock face into Dark Laser's hands and made himself scarce with a _'No need to trouble your evil bones, for I shall ground myself on my own'_ sort of _anti-poof_ of purple smoke. Dark Laser, for his part, looked up at the fuming Anti-Cosmo about ready to unleash his fury on whichever innocent bystander he bumped into first, and set the clock on the ground. He spun on one heel, leg extended in front of him, and jogged away with his arms pumping at rapid speed. Letting out a loud huff, Anti-Cosmo rounded on Chloe.

"U-um. Mr. Foop's dad?" Chloe ignored the way his bat-like ears flicked back when she said it, and pressed on. She held up the box of Finley's shredded, gooey remains. "Okay. Before you decide to annihilate me, can you at least take this to the Head Pixie? I-it's one of his pixies. He exploded." Beat. "I tried to stop him."

Anti-Cosmo sighed. He lifted the box from her arms. "Oh, relax, child. I'm not about to pulverize you. There simply isn't time. Time is money, as you know, and money leads to power, and today of all days it would seem I have neither. We shall meet again another day, this I'm sure, but for now, I must go after my wayward son. Children. One day they're filling your dungeon with giant spiders, the next they think they can do whatsoever they want without even calling home. Cheerio!"

He disappeared in a spiral of smoke, muttering something about the irony of delivering a pixie child to someone when pixies were supposed to be the masters of deliveries.

"Chloe!" Before Anti-Cosmo's smoke cloud had even fully disappeared, Poof flew off a shelf, dragging Timmy behind him by the hand. "Guess what? Guess what? I used Timmy's flashlight as a reverse link to undo my spell! It worked! Mrs. Powers always said it wouldn't, but I proved her wrong! So, so wrong! It's a spell modifier, see, sort of like sniffing him out and then undoing a knot in a sewing project, so I managed to _poof_ him back, even though it took like a _lot_ out of me and I'll probably be in huge trouble for bending the rules, but luckily my dorm's RA is super rad so he'll probably support me in all my dreams-"

"-and now we need to find a belt for our clock and someone who can sign off our purchase? Great! No time to waste." Chloe grabbed both his and Timmy's wrists, determined not to let them slip away from her this time. "Let's go. I think I saw a pixie over here pressing buttons on a singing fish."

"Hey," Timmy yelped, hopping on one foot after her. "What about the ones chasing us? Poof and I saw H.P. running around just a few aisles over, and man, has he got a _swarm_ with him."

"Hang on a sec." Poof waved both godkids behind him. Chloe followed his gaze to Mr. Crocker still behind the other shelf, crouched and ready to run for the clock face lying on the floor. Whipping his rattle into fully-extended mode, he shouted, "Hey, Mr. Crocker! This time, baby got _bat!"_

When he swung, he released a (very non-lethal) burst of wind, which sent Crocker sailing backwards like a baseball, down the aisle and into a large chair that Poof kindly _poof_ ed up for him to land in. He blew on the top of his rattle, then spun it through his fingers.

"I kinda get extra credit in school when I can prove I used my magic for malicious reasons. Long story. Don't ask."

Chloe raised one finger. "Someone remind me why, despite all Da Rules preventing us from wishing up actually interesting, educational, useful, and fun stuff, he's still allowed to use magic inside a shopping center. Shouldn't there be anti-theft wards or something everywhere?"

"But what about the pixies?" Timmy demanded, pushing them forward again. "We're gonna be slaughtered! Death by a thousand paper cuts! H.P. will give me my own cubicle with a stapler and a printer and my own super fast high-tech computer - which actually doesn't sound that bad now that I think about it - but he'll rub me in Jorgen's and Anti-Cosmo's faces until the end of time. I'll have to learn to tie a tie! Do you not understand the horrors this entails? Am I not describing this well enough?"

At this, Poof only grinned. "You know what? You can leave the pixies to me. Timmy, would you do the honors?"

It took Timmy a second to figure out where Poof was going with this, but when he got it, he got it. He pulled Chloe to a halt. She turned. Timmy grinned right back at his godbrother and drew out his flashlight. He shone it on Poof and swept low into a bow. "Ohhhh, yeah. Poof, I wish you had total control of the biggest boombox in all of Pixie World."

 _POOF!_

The ground began to rumble. Chloe looked down at the cracks splitting into existence below her feet. A massive pink, solid structure split apart the warehouse floor and continued forcing its way upward- lifting her, Timmy, and Poof into the air. Well, it lifted her and Timmy. Poof somehow managed to stay floating at about the same distance above the pink mass even as it rose. Chloe held out her arms, trying to keep her legs from stumbling until at last the boombox, mercifully, stopped growing. Timmy let out a long whistle.

"Now _this_ is a box."

Poof _poof_ ed a tiny plastic microphone into his hand. It looked totally fake, but he seemed to think it was real, so Chloe didn't question it. "Don't worry," he said, "it's a waggle dance. I got this. Everyone knows this song. It's a classic. Fairy dads use it on their kids to get them into the bath and then to bed and stuff. I'll hold off the ones who are after you. You guys find a pixie who's actually sane enough to ring that purchase up for you, and get out of here."

"Won't we be affected by the dance too?" Chloe asked, staring over the mass of shelves and shoppers below. People had started to look. Understandable. The massive boombox nearly touched the warehouse ceiling and it was glowing bright pink, so it was tough to miss.

"Not if I edit you out of the splash zone in my mind. I can do that."

"Good luck," Timmy called over his shoulder.

"Luck is for Anti-Fairies," Poof said with a chuckle. He raised the microphone to his mouth and waved at the crowd below. "Hellooo, Pixie World! You already know who it is, but I'll tell you anyway just to rub it in. This is Fairy World's favorite boombox personality Nebula Zeke, coming from a big, big stage real close to you."

"Drama queen," Timmy muttered, but with a smile on his face. "Let's hope that boombox is loud enough. I think it's the only way he stands a chance of being dominant against other gynes."

"We'd better go," Chloe said. It was eerily silent in the warehouse.

"Right. Operation Checkout now combobulates. We'll have to jump down to that shelf."

"Commences."

"That's what I said."

Poof cleared his throat into the microphone. It shrieked for just one second. He gave it two taps with his fingers, and began. _"Ooooooooohhhh._ Here we go. _No Fae walks this world alone. Never met a one who would. I can give you what you want. Just convince me that I should."_

As they scrambled down the shelves, Chloe threw a glance back up at Poof. He'd started to do that dance Finley had been doing, where he shifted side to side, swaying forward and back. Chloe knew he'd filtered her out of the "splash zone" as he'd called it, but even so, when she looked directly at him, she felt a powerful urge to join in. It looked like a lot of fun, after all. It took a tug on her hand from Timmy to turn her around again. From up here, she could see dozens of swaying pixies lit by neon lights and the glow of their Santa outfits. Even regular Fairies rustled their wings and twirled. They began to clap out a slow, heavy beat.

Poof flung out his arm, stabbing his finger into the air at an angle. _"Let me see you shake that thing! Everybody flash your bling. Never cross a fairy ring! Don't you let me hear you sing."_

The hand motions seemed to come so naturally to him, as though he'd been born knowing how to do this. Poof lowered the microphone from his mouth while he performed them, grinning when his movements were mimicked perfectly by the crowd below. Someone whooped, and that broke the silence. A dozen other voices jeered and someone else booed. One person cried, "Look, it's Poof!" and someone else went, "He's so cute!" Some muttered to each other, "He's a gyne? Is he? I didn't know that. When did he shed? It's been so long, hasn't it?" People began to shout, and not all the things they said were nice. Chloe cringed, and she could feel Poof's energy waver in the air. Nonetheless, his voice remained steady.

 _"Everyone, all eyes up here. I'll sing a song that I hold dear. And every word we all should know. If you're against it tell me so."_

 _"So!"_

The word blasted through the speakers and nearly tore them all apart. The energy in the room shifted immediately. Chloe felt it ripple across her skin. She fell to her knees, and Timmy went down beside her. Poof actually dropped his microphone. It bounced, clanging hard, and rolled towards the edge of the boombox. Raising her head was a fight all its own, but when she did, Chloe gasped. There, at the other end of the giant boombox platform, was the Head Pixie, pressing the microphone of his headset near his lips. He didn't look so jolly now. Even Anti-Cosmo cowered beside him.

"Uh… Timmy? By any chance, is the Head Pixie a gyne too?"

"No way. He's old. Old people can't have freckles. They just have wrinkles and liver spots. Have you ever seen an old person with freckles? Yeah, that's what I thought."

The Head Pixie floated closer to Poof, forcing Poof to cringe away, wings aflutter. _"I like your style, kid. But take two steps back now."_

Obediently, Chloe and Timmy sprang up and did as he ordered. They bumped into a shelf of knight and castle toys. A plastic lance dug into the space behind Chloe's ear.

 _"Classics are for baby nymphs so improvise or I'll call foul."_

When Poof picked up his plastic microphone, Chloe could actually hear him shaking. "Um. Uh…"

H.P. plucked the microphone away and threw it over his shoulder. Anti-Cosmo, still crouched back there, caught it accidentally when he flung his hands up to cover his face. _"I knew you couldn't do it. Your face is turning red. You're barely out of nymphhood and I think it's time you went to bed."_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap clap clap._ This time, all the Fairies around Timmy and Chloe joined them in the dance. Timmy offered her his hand. Unable to resist - literally - Chloe mimed a curtsy, and Timmy bowed.

"No!" Poof forced himself to his feet, giving a great mental shove at the same time. Chloe physically felt the Head Pixie's control lifting away from her. She looked up to see if H.P. would stagger back and topple from the boombox, but as near as she could tell, the only thing he did was raise one unimpressed eyebrow. Poof stepped forward nonetheless.

 _"You think I'm just a kid; okay, I guess you could be right."_ He waved his arms about as he forced out the words, then shrugged, planting his hands to either hip. Throwing fear of embarrassment to the wind, he gave his rear end a couple of large shakes. _"But my friends are counting on me and I swear we'll make it through the night."_

H.P. placed his mitten on Poof's face and pushed him backwards. _"You're talking awfully big for someone who will end up mine. Tell me, Fairywinkle: Who gave you all those breathing lines?"_

Poof faltered. "I… I mean…"

"What's going on?" Timmy hissed between his teeth as he spun Chloe in a circle. The two of them almost bumped into a Fairy couple who were doing the same twirl in the opposite direction, but somehow, their steps were perfect, and they managed to completely avoid one another.

"He's upset. The Head Pixie's getting into his head."

 _"We know how this ends up; don't you know your mother's song? 'Don't let your babies grow up Pixies'- Tell me if I'm wrong."_ Taking Poof's hands, H.P. spun him in a small circle. _"You've always been a little 'off' and I know how that feels. Your breathing lines are braided wrong and twist around like eels."_

Timmy released Chloe's waist long enough to clap his hands. They stared at each other, mouths pressed in tight lines. "I wish," Timmy whispered, "I could help him."

This wish went unanswered.

 _"Everyone can sense it."_ H.P.'s grip slipped from Poof's fingertips up to his forearms. He clenched around the small fairy's wrists. This time when he spun Poof, he actually swung him around, while Poof yelped and kicked his legs. _"They laugh behind your back. I hope you love that wisp since she's the best you'll ever catch."_

" _D-don't tell me what I a'ready know. It's always been my fear. But sometimes songs can just be songs, and I will never end up here."_

"What's he talking about?" Chloe whispered, spinning under Timmy's arm. He had to stretch on his toes to make sure she could get under without ducking. "Why would Poof have to work at Pixies Inc.? He's going to be a godparent, right?"

Timmy caught and dipped her when she draped over his arm. "I dunno? I know he and Finley argue about career options a lot."

 _"I'm not meant for Pixie World! I'll fight it every day! I know that he can change and I don't care what Fairies say!"_

 _"Are you so sure of that, my boy?_ " H.P. paused to tap his lips. _"You helped that man commit a theft. When everyone hears of the truth, what option will be left?"_

 _Clap. Clap. Clap clap clap._

Poof gasped as though he'd just been shot. He struggled against the Head Pixie's grip to no apparent avail. _"Jorgen would have killed him! He tried to have him fried. I know he's been a pain, but I couldn't stand there and just watch him die."_

 _"And now your reputation? It's cinders and it's ash. Or if not yet, it will be soon, when they learn of your past."_

 _"I stand by the choice I made! I- I-_ I…"

H.P. nodded and pulled Poof close against his chest. _"You're not a pixie by your blood, but blood is not the end. Can't you see your office now and the papers stacked up in your hands? Don't shake your head so quickly. Your future's on the line. Come find me when you're jobless and you need a way to make a dime."_

 _"I'll never be a Pixie! I'm not at all like that!"_ Poof tore himself away from H.P., clutching his hands to his ears. _"My lines may be a wreck, but I would never, ever join a rat! I'm going my own way. You'll always have to wait. I wanna have a godkid, so I'm never gonna take your bait."_

 _"Not even for a Pixie's wage? Oh, Poof, don't be a fool."_ Catching Poof's wrists and pinning them behind his head, H.P. leered forward. _"Just who would trust a fairy who got Crocker hired at his school?"_

Timmy actually dropped Chloe on the floor. "Oh."

 _"I'm doing what is right!"_ His voice staggered and it choked. _"I know that he can change! He's teaching us, he's happy, and soon you all will see the same! I'd trust him with my life! He spared me once before! And if you disagree with me,_ **let me show you to the door!"**

With a superfae effort, Poof shoved the Head Pixie towards the edge of the boombox. Direct contact with all that Fairy magic swirling in his coat turned out to be too much. With a _crack_ and a flutter of the lights, Poof flew backwards, off the boombox, and kept going towards the nearest wall- more than ten shelves away.

 _"No!"_ Timmy screamed, shoving himself away from Chloe and the other dancers.

The Head Pixie pressed the microphone of his headset near his mouth again. "Sanderson, I need a cleanup on Aisle 24."

However, the Head Pixie had forgotten one very important detail. This was Poof we were talking about here. Outgrown his ball form or not, he was still a springy fairy child, and after nearly fifty years, he'd had more practice jumping off the walls than most.

He hit the wall. And he _bounced_. With a screech, hands outstretched. H.P. barely had time to turn around before Poof barreled into him, this time tackling him straight off the edge of the boombox and into the shelf across the way. An explosion of sparks ripped through the air, blowing out every rave light in the vicinity. The world plunged into dark.

"Poof," Chloe yelped, clapping her hands to her forehead. "You can't do that! The guy's like a million years old! We're definitely going to Fairy juvie hall after this."

"No, no, no!" Timmy took off, shoving his way through the now extremely frazzled and dizzy Gray Tuesday crowd. "Poof! Poof!"

"Timmy!" Chloe raced after him. She'd always had excellent night vision, but this was ridiculous even for her. She knew from Wanda that Fairies could sense the presence of other magical beings and navigate around them as naturally in the night as day, but as a human, she was sprinting completely blind. The one guiding light shining through were the few dim sparks shooting up from the place where the Head Pixie had fallen, like a beacon in a storm.

After zig-zagging around a few shelves, Chloe felt her thumping heart sink like iron. Just ahead, occasionally blocked from her vision by Timmy's darting silhouette, she could make out dozens of glowing red shapes running, crawling, and flying towards them over shelves, between shoppers, and around the corners.

Pixies.

"You don't suppose they're here to offer us free gift wrapping, do you?" Timmy asked weakly.

Chloe glanced back and forth, clenching her hands near her chest. Pixies leered at her from the shelves, buzzing and lunging as they made their way closer. "There's too many of them. Poof! You have to waggle!"

There was no singing to be heard from the fallen fairy. Only shaking, choking sobs. And staggered laughter.

"Poof!" Timmy shouted, watching in dismay as pixies filled the way between them like a liquid storm.

"We have no choice." Chloe squared her shoulders and readied her fighting stance. "Timmy, I'll clear a path. You find someone who can ring up that purchase so we can get out of here."

Timmy turned in the dark and looked her up and down. "Yeah… Let's _stop_ hurting the pixies. That never helped anything."

The decision was made for them by a slice of energy down the middle of the pixie forces. It cut their group in half and swept them to either side. Pixies flew left and right as though parted by Moses himself. They smacked into the aisles and each other, knocking products off the shelves with grunts and bursts. When the dust cleared, Poof was floating there with his hands doused in flickering blue light.

"Poof!"

Poof beamed, his mouth aglitter with magic. "They don't call me the Pinball Kid without a good reason why."

Chloe grinned. "I will definitely start calling you that now."

The Head Pixie erupted into the air behind him right then, wings and arms fully extended to either side. He slammed his mittened hands together in a thunderous clap. Streams of red light zoomed upwards from the mass of pixies below as their colors were literally ripped away from them. A hundred pixies instantly burst into paper-mâché. A hundred more followed a few seconds later. The Head Pixie raised his fists above his head, gathering the red energy into a single ball at least five times his size.

"Oh-" Timmy began.

"My-" Chloe squeaked.

"Dust."

"He wouldn't," she protested as Fairies around them ran, flew, and _poof_ ed for cover. "Not in here!"

"Hate to burst your bubble, Chloe, but one freakin' huge energy ball says otherwise."

"How do we fight him?"

"We don't!" Timmy grabbed her hand and yanked her down the aisle. "Run for it!"

They didn't get far before they crashed into one pixie who hadn't lost his bright red coat. It was the pixie she'd first seen outside with H.P. and Anti-Cosmo, the curled cowlicks in his hair. He caught Timmy by one shoulder. The clock flew out of his hands. It crashed against the floor. The glass face shattered into triangles.

"No!"

The pixie grabbed Timmy's arms and twisted them behind his back. Chloe skidded to a halt. With the Head Pixie gathering that ticking time-bomb of energy above his head, she couldn't afford more than a split second to think. If pixies were drawn to protect each other… then maybe…

Chloe grabbed the largest shard of glass she could find on the floor and lunged for the pixie. His expression never changed, but he pulled Timmy in front of him as he backed away. That didn't deter Chloe. She landed, kicked off, and performed two flips straight over his head. She clipped against his wings as she came down. Thrown off balance, she hit the ground face-first with a solid smack. No time for lying around on the job now. She flipped over to her back just as the pixie's foot came down where her hand had just been. Springing to her feet, she struck out at the pixie's arms. He twisted away to no avail. She drove the chunk of glass straight into his palm.

"Chloe, no!" Poof yelped, tugging at his hair.

"Chloe did what Chloe does," she shouted back.

The pixie's grip on Timmy loosened. He dropped at once to his knees, clenching his wrist, and made no move to strike out at anyone. That was easier than expected.

A sharp crackle of electricity ripped through the air. Chloe looked up. The Head Pixie hadn't missed what she'd done. With his face aglow in the surrounding dark, she couldn't miss the twisted expression on his face.

Horror.

The energy ball snapped and sputtered. Its lights began to dim. Its particles didn't spin nearly so fast across its globe. The Head Pixie noticed this too. He set his jaw. Winding up for the swing, he twisted in the air and held his hands behind his body. A sizzling stripe of energy took on the solid form of a golf club beneath his hands.

The biggest golf club in the entire world. Purple-red and flinging lightning bolts in all directions.

Timmy grabbed her elbow in one hand, stuffing Poof under his arm. "It's gonna blow!"

"I'm on it!" Chloe slapped her wrist. Then again for good measure, jamming her thumb into the button on her "watch". _Crack!_ went H.P.'s club against the energy burst. It sailed towards them, blazing everything in its path with dancing red flames. Chloe pled and prayed that keeping physical contact with Timmy and Poof would cause her teleporter to _poof_ both of them back to Dimmsdale along with her.

It did, just in the nick of time. Flickers of red still ran up and down their _poof_ cloud, mixing with the dust. Poof, Chloe was grateful to see, had thought ahead. Even though they'd been at Crocker's when he'd _poof_ ed the teleporters up, he'd apparently calibrated hers to send her to a safe place across Dimmsdale that Crocker would never suspect: Her own bedroom. The three of them collapsed on the pillows of her bed, shaking as they laughed until they were in tears.

Chloe was the first to sit up. "Wow. You two sure know how to throw a Gray Tuesday party. Tonight was crazy, and I loved every heartbeat of it." She placed her hand to her chest for emphasis and leaned forward to whisper again, "Every. Heartbeat."

Poof grinned back at her. "Yeah, we should do this every year."

"I'd be okay with that. Well, minus the fact that there have to be pixies in Pixie World, anyway." She turned to Timmy, her smile fading as he sat up. "I'm sorry about your clock."

Timmy's smile was weary. The back of his shirt had been scorched, and he'd lost his famous hat. "Chloe, as your best friend, I am obligated to tell you that the best gift I can give Jorgen for the Fairy Reunion is probably blowing up the Pixies' headquarters and causing no end of chaos, all without him having to face H.P. himself and take the blame. After what _we_ did, the Pixies definitely won't be causing us any trouble for years."

Chloe forced herself to smile. "Oh. Well. At least it wasn't a total waste."

"Now that we've got that out of the way…" Timmy brought his hands before his chest as though in prayer, closing his eyes. And then he exploded. "You _stabbed_ a _person_ who was like _alive_ , Chloe! You stabbed H.P.'s best friend, Mr. Sanderson, in the _hand!_ A pixie! Why would you risk that?"

"Hey, you weren't trying to wish for anything. Hurt pixies attract the attention of other pixies, right? I thought maybe…" Chloe trailed off. Now that they were out of danger, she realized how fortunate it was that the events of the night had gone down the way they had. Heck, they'd almost gotten blasted by the biggest fireball she'd probably ever seen. They were lucky to be standing here so unharmed.

"You just shouldn't have gone for his hand is what I'm saying." Timmy pointed his finger at his own. "Fairies kinda breathe through their hands, I think. Pixies too. They can't use magic if their right hand doesn't work. Sanderson's as good a tomte as Finley now for the next, I dunno how long it'll take him to heal, hundred years. Maybe even more than that. H.P.'s gonna be _super_ ticked. We're all gonna be smack on his hit list for the rest of our lives!"

Chloe shrank back beneath his fury, raising her eyebrows. "I didn't know-"

"That's the point! You don't know enough about magic yet to do stuff like this, Chloe! You're still new at this! You didn't know if the Pixies were gonna swarm you, or if H.P. was gonna snap his fingers and stop your heart right then, or anything like that. You could have gotten yourself killed. Or worse, _all_ of us killed." He threw his arms around her, leaning his head against her ear. "I just… I'm just glad you and Poof are both okay. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you guys like that."

"Oh, Timmy." Not wanting to embarrass him too much, and knowing she'd have her chance to rub it in his face later, Chloe gave his back a few quick pats and then held him away by the shoulders. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

He smiled back at her, but almost immediately, his short attention span was distracted by something behind her shoulder. "Wait a minute…" Pushing past her, and after sliding from her bed, Timmy walked over to the sparkling purple goodness that was her vanity. He picked up a pink envelope lying in front of the mirror, beside her nail clippers and hairbrush. Without asking permission, he tore the envelope open. A folded piece of bright yellow paper fell into his hand. He looked over at her. "Seriously? Seriously?"

"Ohh," Chloe said as it dawned on her. "Yeah, I think Cosmo gave me that a few weeks ago, but I kind of forgot about it." She slipped off the bed and took the invitation from him. _Congratulations!_ proclaimed the sparkling silver text. _You've been invited to join your godparents at the Fairy Reunion this LA, 80, YotAR9._ Huh. She flipped the invitation around, humming the universal question mark sound.

"December 4th on the Fairy calendar. I'm assuming." Timmy let his hands drop to his sides with a slap. "Guess I'll be seeing you there after all."

"Guess you will. I'm pretty tough to get rid of that easily." Chloe scanned through the rest of the invitation, chewing on her lower lip. "Oh hey, I have your name for the gift exchange. Is there anything cool you have in mind?"

Poof waved his rattle. "Any takers for an instant box of coupons yet?"

"New clock," Timmy said simply. "One of those gimmicky ones that tries too hard to pretend that morning can be fun. I like stuff like that."

"New clock. Got it."

"Or, y'know, there is that ultra-rare Red Ninja video game too. I never got the chance to see if the Pixies still had a copy."

Poof grinned. "I wouldn't complain if you got him one of those. I _am_ the actual Red Ninja of the prophecy, you know. Completely 100% true. Do some behind-the-scenes lore digging and look it up."

Timmy turned on him. "And as for you, smart aleck-! You and I've really gotta talk about what goes on behind the doors of your school."

A switch flipped in the hallway with a click, the light leaking beneath Chloe's bedroom door. This was followed by rustling feet and the sound of Clark and Connie Carmichael whispering together. Timmy backed away. "We'd better go."

Chloe tucked the invitation back into its envelope, surprised and thankful that it hadn't exploded with firecrackers and oodles of noise. "Thanks for the crazy Gray Tuesday adventure. Call me if you get thrown in Wishing Well."

"Haha. Wouldn't be the first time. Poof, I wish we were at my house again. And…" Timmy winced. "Let's hope Cosmo and Wanda aren't waiting there to chew us out."

"Fat chance," Poof said with a cheerful chuckle in his voice. He twirled his rattle through the air. Before Chloe even turned to face the twisting knob on her door, both her godbrothers had disappeared in a simple little _poof._

* * *

 **A/N** \- I'm absolutely in _love_ with the idea Butch Hartman pitched in one of his "10 Years Later" videos about Crocker going on to teach at Spellementary School post-series. Of course, maybe I'm just biased since it happened to align perfectly with… another idea I had planned. But, more on such things another day.


	46. (57) Whatever

_Summary:_ "Whatever" - The first word to pop into Seneca Cajallena-Buxaplenty's mind when she learned of her second pregnancy.

 _Characters:_ Seneca, Bennett, Juandissimo, Liam, Remy (Mentioned), Jorgen, assorted rich people, assorted fairies

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Blame" / "Excitement"

 _A/N:_ See also, "Fairy Fairy Quite Contrary"

* * *

 **57\. Whatever** (~11½ years pre-series)

 _Year of Fire; Summer of the Scarlet Oil_

* * *

These things were supposed to happen to other people. Lesser people. Seneca gave Bennett the news while peering at the third mirror in the second master bathroom- the one in the house's west wing. Tiffany Tang had loaned her this gorgeous pair of earrings last week (as a "trial run"). Emeralds and peacock feathers. She didn't have emeralds yet. They matched the shoes she'd been gifted from Lennis Kashfirguld. And, better yet, they matched her eyes. Much better than the sapphires ever did. Tsk tsk. Had it really been six weeks since her last haircut? Trust Seneca Cajallena-Buxaplenty to still be flaunting her fabulous looks. She'd chopped the soft blonde waves to her ears. They framed her face just right, even now.

The earrings really didn't need fiddling with. Seneca had worn all sorts of jewelry over the years. Most importantly, the massive diamond on her finger. But, she wanted Bennett to see them. The puzzled stare was a delicious step up from his usual absent-minded glances.

"What?" Bennett said, still standing in the doorway. One of his hands rested on the edge of her mirrored sliding closet door, as though he thought he had a right to touch it. He had no clothes in there. The north end of the west wing was his. The south end was hers.

"Pregnant."

His hands. Beautiful hands, smooth hands, flawless hands. Broad hands genetically, softened by three and a half decades of butlers and lotion. Bennett's skin had always been gorgeous, his complexion as tan as crispy toast and topped with spikes of buttery hair. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. He shoved them in the pockets of his coat. White coat, soap-smelling coat, waterproof coat. Green bills bulged. Green eyes squinted. "Hmm. I know it isn't mine. I can confirm."

His voice drawled. Softly, though- gentle in her ears. Creamy voice, golden voice, siren voice. Seneca fought the urge to drape herself over his arm, to let him whisk her through the mansion in her crisp white heels to a forgotten silver dance in the bronze-walled bathroom. Floor tiled in the Cajallena family crest. She'd insisted on that.

"Oh, I know _that_. He's seventeen weeks along, by the way. I've been wanting to tell you. But I wanted to know for sure if he was a boy or a girl."

He glanced at the floor. "Seventeen? So it happened at the summer dinner social, then."

"Almost." Seneca moved to the second earring. Gray teeth, poor reflection. She really ought to stop smoking, especially now that she was expecting again. She stuck out her tongue.

"Lennis Kashfirguld was not at the party." Bennett's lips turned into a thin cord. "I would have remembered. There were no black-haired men at that party."

"Not that party. The one just before it. I found someone better than Lennis this time."

She waited for Bennett to list off his suspicions, glancing up at his image in the mirror. He continued to stand in the doorway, but now with his head tilted to one side. Slight tilt, doggy tilt, adorable tilt. Her hands trembled. She fumbled with the earring clasp.

"What?" she asked. "Don't you want to guess who? At… the party before the summer dinner party? Aren't you going to guess?"

His arms moved until they were folded. A turtle in a quilt. A sloth in molasses. Ooh, she'd have to remember to write that one down. That should go in her latest manuscript.

Bennett leaned his hip against the frame of the door that led to her bedroom. The thin divider curtain (satin, semi-transparent, glittering with captive rainbows) fluttered behind him. "What was it you liked to be called again?"

"'Darling' is fine."

"Oh, right. Yes. _Mmhm_. Darling, this is nonsensical. Why would you go and play these games? There are security cameras in every room in this house."

Seneca shrugged. Bennett crinkled his nose. Precious nose, perfect nose.

"Hm. I'd expect that to bother you."

"It doesn't," she said, clipping the earring into place at last. She fluffed her hair. Pale blonde, dyed blonde, too blonde. Should have been silver. She'd always been his silver. Fine. Seneca turned to face him, bracing her hands on the pristine counter behind her. "Well, I'd expect it not to bother you."

Bennett tilted his head the other way, almost bumping it against one of two flat-screen TVs hanging across from the claw-footed bathtub. "It doesn't. I'm not the one who slunk off behind my beloved's back."

"I enjoyed it," Seneca told him, casting the accusation across the room. She wished there was something heavy on the counter to throw. She wished he'd do something to make her throw it. Caress it, clutch it, hurl it.

"I'm the richest," he said.

Seneca tightened her grip on the counter's edge. "Some people would be bothered if they found their wife was with child from another man."

"Were you paid?"

He sounded like he meant it. Completely. Seneca let go of the counter.

"Benny, it doesn't always work like that."

One eyebrow went up. There shouldn't have been a smile. Half an eyeball, two eyeballs, smug satisfaction. Like a hunter closing in on a naughty vixen, moving slowly with thumping footsteps just for the effect. Cocking guns. Cocky smirk. Her hands clenched.

"No. No, I wasn't paid. I didn't do it for money. It's that I liked the man enough to give that part of myself to him. That's why I did it."

Reaction? Seneca searched his face. Cool face, thoughtful face, golden face. Half-pleased face? Oh. Jaw drop. Heart stop. Thump. Thump. Tumble. Thud. It all went to ashes. Shouldn't have been pleased. Cheshire pleased. Yet he was. She licked her lips. Again. Tundra dry. Cold.

"Some… some husbands wouldn't stand for that. Did you want to guess who it was?"

"Was he blond?" Bennett asked with hoping forward steps.

She almost lied. But wouldn't. Couldn't. Not to him. Her eyes flickered down. "I said it was the party before the summer dinner social. You remember. Do… do you remember?"

He had to think about it. Think about the parties. Count them. "Oh, yes. My family reunion."

 _"Sí."_

"Interesting choice."

Seneca inhaled. _"Sí."_

"Blond then." Satisfied cream. Bennett's eyelids fluttered shut with soft pride. "Blond like his father this time."

 _"Sí."_

"I assume it was on purpose?"

Blink. _"S-sí. Sí._ Benny…"

"Of course, all my brothers are married."

 _"Sí."_

He counted them off on his fingers. Slow fingers, gloved fingers. A desperate wish for fingers in her hair. "Oliver. Charlie. Dylan. Jack."

"Oliver, Oliver," she blurted. Couldn't stand it; wouldn't try to stand it. Shifted her feet. Bennett glared at her. Her flesh rattled with goosebumps.

 _"I_ am not finished, Seneca." He switched to his other hand. Pressed each finger down, bending back deep. "Toby. Albert. Alicia. Dexter." The first again. "Elliot. Luke." Hands dropping. Hands in the air. Shock that, to him, felt real. "Too many children. Why would anyone want so many children? Can you even imagine what level of lust ran through my parents' heads?" Hands to hand-purses, fingertips forced together and upturned. Quick steps, stalking sneer. Thicker drawl. "E _lev_ en times in bed together? Jail alone wouldn't have been enough to keep those rabbits apart. It's because they went to church."

"Church?" Seneca echoed. Mouse voice, mouse in mousetrap voice.

"Devout parents," he muttered. His eyes wandered to the towel rack, and to the shelf above it that held too many dragon figurines. "Won't catch me chasing false angels any day."

"I like him." Silence. Try again. Cough. "I love him. Oliver. His wife's a shrew. She torments him. Shrieks at the kids. He said. I don't know. We've been writing letters for years. I have them. Do you want me to get them for you?"

Bennett looked at her. "He's my twin. Of course you thought you loved him. Personality doesn't matter to you. You just want the bed."

"Benny?" He always let her call him Benny. It never bothered him. Seneca reached out. She touched his shoulder. He tensed, but didn't shift away. She withdrew her hand. It clenched and went to her chest.

"I'm the richest," he said again, wiping his arm where her fingers had brushed. "You're still here." He lifted two fingers so his meaning was clear. Two betrayals. Two children. No accident. Gloved hands. Untouchable. Untouched. Long coat. Tight pants. Tighter belt. Internal anguish. Huffing and heaving like ships in storms. Blink. Blink. Seaside wet. Cold.

Seneca turned her back, tossing her hair. This was a less effective gesture than it possibly could have been. She could still see Bennett's reflection gazing back at her, and he could still see her face. He adjusted the blue tie at his neck with one hand. Blue. Oh, Bennett loved blue. It was all sapphires and lapis lazulis with him, but never silver.

"Mmhm. Darling, listen."

She did not reply.

"I'll spread word with tact. We'll allow your mother and all your friends to throw you first, second, and third showers for the baby."

Soft drawl, gentle drawl, _delicious_ drawl. Shoulders sinking. Lips parting. Mouse heart racing. Knees of jelly. Want his hug. He went on.

"That way at least something good will come out of this incident. We'll want to make him as public knowledge as possible. The blond one. People were beginning to talk about us."

"Us?" She whipped around. When eyes flash, worlds collide. They quail. Bennett leaned forward, clutching his tie. Clenching, squeezing. Heartbeat. Crush it all. Dancing smile, deadly.

"Yes. I've heard them talk. They drift around parties claiming you and I don't love each other. That our elaborate marriage was all for status and wealth and show. That you were failing in your duties as a wife."

Seneca tightened her teeth. Of course. Such a sexist world _would_ pin the blame on her, accusing her of a frigid nature even though it was Bennett, always Bennett, who expressed constant distaste regarding activities of the bedroom. In ten years of marriage, Seneca could count on one hand the times they had shared a night together. And she only had four fingers on each, so it wasn't many at all. Only once had he ever initiated the offer: Their honeymoon in Iceland, with the northern lights ablaze above the clear roof of their penthouse dome. He had lain with her then only out of cold obligation to make her his, to stamp and tag her as one of his belongings with the same patient efficiency he did everything else.

"I see," she said. Her fingers itched. After this, she'd need a cigarette.

She'd known when she married him what she'd be giving up. At least, she'd thought she did, mostly. It wasn't supposed to be this bad. Bennett hadn't kept his lack of interest a secret throughout their courtship. And she, foolish bird she was, had convinced herself that he was only saying such things to be a proper young man. That if she had but one night beside him, she could change his mind. That everyone felt the way he did. That his blank, deep green eyes would light beneath her as soon as she caressed his lips with a kiss. Blooming kiss, flower kiss.

And as she stood there, her lower lip gave a single tremble. Who was out there spreading such rumors? Angel? Tiffany? Her sisters-in-law? It didn't matter who started it, so much as who passed it along to who at what time and why. Cruel words, nipping winds. How _dare_ anyone imply she hadn't been a perfect wife? Ten years of patience made a saint out of anyone.

… Six years of patience, maybe. Liam was four years old.

And Liam's new brother just four months along.

Her husband ("partner" might be the better word, or perhaps "housemate") scanned her body language with unblinking laughter, then leaned away again. He released his tie. "Wait until the showers are done and the gifts are unwrapped. Then you can try to miscarry it, if you choose to. The cigarettes will help with that. We can still leave our fortune to Liam. Perhaps bleach his hair as pale as yours. In a few decades, we may have the technology to genetically modify it. I'm rich. It can be done."

"I don't miscarry," Seneca said, more stiffly than she meant to. "I'm a Cajallena."

Bennett simply shrugged, the quiet man. His gaze had turned misty again in thought. Grassy eyes, olive eyes, stranger's eyes.

"Well." The word was hot and awkward on her tongue. Seneca inhaled, then slid past him. Out of the bathroom. Into the bedroom. Her bedroom. The second master bathroom- the one in the house's west wing. South end. Her bed up a set of five steps, with a fireplace below and white reading chairs clustered around. One bookshelf. Her novels. If you did the math right when calculating the amount of work poured into those treasures, her hourly wage came out to be 50 cents or so. Writing was blood and pain; no one entered this business to get rich. Bennett was a dream come true, coated in the frosting of disappointment. A dream only half-reached. But she needed him.

She brushed off her dress with her hands. The diamond on her ring (heartless diamond) fixed nothing and broke bridges. Without turning back, she said, "I just wanted to tell you it's a boy."

Bennett lifted his shoulders again. Seneca scooted past a bed that was always half empty. The Buxaplenty crest had been printed on the rug. Silver rug, golden crest. Her present to him, the first birthday they'd been married. It was the only golden thing in the room, but it wasn't supposed to be.

Seneca clasped the braided rope dangling between her bed and the door. She gave it a yank. Within ten seconds, one of the inside chauffeurs arrived in his cushioned golf cart to escort her through the mansion halls. Seneca stepped through the door. The chauffeur shut it behind her, leaving Bennett alone in her bathroom.

"Señora Cajallena," he greeted, bowing low.

"Take me to the east wing," she said. "South end. I'm due to spend my daily two minutes with Liam."

The chauffeur lifted her hand and guided her into the golf cart. Seneca sat and set about adjusting first her hair, then her massive diamond ring. Broken ring. She folded her hands in her lap. The chauffeur climbed in the driver's seat, and sped her through the mansion.

Liam's bedroom was much too good for him. The floor was solid gray and white marble, all shiny and sleek. His bed was plush, the covers green and black and white, the sheets 900-count. Yet the child acted like he didn't even know how to use it. He spent more of his time at the plastic table on the opposite side. He had special pencils for drawing with. Mostly shades of greens and blues. An entire box of them. When the butler opened the door and Seneca peered in, Liam was standing over by the table, coloring busily. Didn't even look up at her. He always stood while he drew, clenching six or seven pencils in his left fist and just one in the other. He had a chair. She'd never seen him use it. What a waste.

Liam was a moon child. A chubby moon child. He'd been born with skin nearly as pale as the paper he so loved to draw on. Blue-gray eyes. Ghostly. White suit, tailored specifically to him. It had to be, with his round shape (Who fed this kid? Chipmunks?) Even with the green bow at his neck to ground him to earthy colors, he looked as though he could slip away and be lost among the stars. His hair (glossy blue-black, spiky even when combed properly, streak of oil in hot water) clashed so much with Bennett's gentle butter fluff that it would be obvious to every last person in town he wasn't legitimate. That's why Liam couldn't go outside, lest he soil the Buxaplenty name with stolen Kashfirguld blood. Not even his grandparents had ever heard of him, as far as she knew. Seneca hadn't told Lennis about Liam at all.

This new baby would be different. Oliver was a Buxaplenty. He had blond hair like his twin. So did she. If Liam was the moonlight, the new child would be sunshine. How funny, to be raising two little boys. If this had been a novel, one of them would be a girl. Sun girl, moon girl… Either worked. But a sunshine boy? That one might raise a few eyebrows.

Seneca drew in a breath. She clasped her hands against her lap. "I have news, Liam. I went to see the baby doctor yesterday. You're going to have a little brother. I hope you're excited and will play with him nicely."

"No," Liam said, coloring more. "No" was the only word he'd ever spoken. Imagine that. Four years old. Seneca took a step closer and got a better look at him. His lips were gooey red. So was the end of his nose.

"Liam." She ran her fingers through her hair. "You have jam on your face. You aren't supposed to be messy like this. Why are you messy?"

Liam rubbed his mouth with his wrist. He continued to color with a green stub. The pencil marks went in all directions. Seneca sighed through her nose and straightened her dress again. Neat dress, favorite dress. Perhaps Liam's butler would come in soon to clean the boy up. He really should be here now, actually. What was she even paying him for?

Seneca checked her watch (Quartz on the inside, pearl on the outside). It was nearly noon. One minute and thirty seconds to go. So be it. She knelt beside the tiny plastic table and studied Liam's drawing upside-down. Two lumps (one black and one purple) that were maybe intended to be dogs floated against a backdrop of pink sky. Curly white clouds along the bottom in place of grass. Well. She'd never claimed he was the _smartest_ child. Absently, Seneca picked up a violet pencil with a yellow cap eraser. She drew a cat on the other end of the paper.

"No," Liam said.

The point of the pencil stopped. Seneca looked over at the boy. "Excuse me? No?"

Liam pushed her hand, his whimper breaking into a full-on whine. "No!"

Seneca threw the pencil to the floor. "Don't you dare start crying, Liam! I'm trying to help you."

"No no no," he said, scrunching his pudgy face. Abandoning the table, he stumbled over to pick the pencil from the ground. Then, with reverence, he set it on its own chair. The chair _he_ should have been sitting in. Seneca frowned. She glanced at her watch again. Thirty seconds left to noon. Close enough; he wouldn't know any different. Pushing down on her knees, she stood.

"When your butler brings you dinner, don't make such a mess. Is that okay, Liam?"

 _"Sí. Muchas gracias, Mamá."_

 _"De nada,"_ Seneca answered without thinking as she walked away. Then she stopped dead, her hand resting on the doorknob. "What did you just say?"

Liam looked up, blinking his beautiful silver eyes. That child needed a haircut, his face captured by liquid shadow. He put his thumb in his mouth.

"Liam, did you talk? Actually talk?"

 _"No."_

Seneca pulled him around the table by his arm. "I told Bennett you would say something real one day! Let's go tell him. I knew you would talk. You were just biding your time, that's all."

But as soon as they left his room, Liam started to cry. He rubbed his eye with one fist and kept trying to turn back to the room. Break away from her. Avoidance.

"Liam," she snapped.

 _"No, no!"_ He snatched his hand away. _"No, Mamá, no!"_

Seneca remembered researching children for a novel she'd written once. Striking his face was more or less illegal. Striking him anywhere wouldn't help overall, not in the long run. What was she was supposed to offer him, again? Something that began with L, like lo… Positive reinforcement. That was it. Seneca scooped Liam into her arms. He kicked and screeched at the top of his lungs. His shirt came untucked. There was still jam on his nose and pencils in his fists.

"Liam!" Seneca bit her tongue as soon as she shouted his name. Shouting, unhelpful. Offering attention now wouldn't benefit either of them. She needed to wait until he calmed down, then reinforce his peaceful behavior with a sentence of praise.

Liam hit her face. Actually. With his hand. Seneca gasped and almost dropped him. As it was, he slipped far down in her arms. She turned on her heel, casting her begging gaze on the golf cart. But when she looked, the chauffeur standing by the car wasn't the chauffeur who had driven her to this end of the mansion. Not at all. That chauffeur had been pale, gray-haired, short… possibly with a mustache, or maybe a mole; she couldn't remember.

This one was tall. He had a darker skin tone than most of the mansion staff, with shiny black hair pulled into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck. A purple bow held it all in place, reminiscent of the powdered wigs from days of old.

Bright gaze. Sparking gaze. Gentle gaze. Periwinkle eyes so light and deep, they could almost, almost be called lavender.

Seneca's eyes moved along the stranger's face. Sharp cheekbones pressed high. Jutting chin, one with angles. His suit was fitted just tight enough to emphasize the larger muscles in his arms. Even his heartbeat was incredibly muscular, because she could hear it even from here. _Tum tum. Tum tum._ Even hear his blood rushing in her ears, rising in her face the longer she stared at him. He had a very still way of standing.

She blinked. She blinked again. Surely she'd recall a face like _that._ Not even she was that oblivious.

"Señora Cajallena."

"I- I-" she stammered out. Her mind didn't match. Nothing fit. Everything was wrong. She stumbled half a step back, taking Liam with her. Fire face, blazing face. Shouldn't have spent those years exchanging letters with Oliver. A man. Heated man. Words? There were words. The only ones she managed to cough up were, _"No habla español."_

Panic. Close panic, warm panic. Seneca shifted in her heels, clinging to one of Liam's arms to keep him from dropping to the floor. Stars above, where was a proper butler to crack open one of the massive mansion windows when she needed one? Tight clothes. Tight face. Tight stare…

The man gazed at her, cool and unsmiling. He took a step forward, more gracefully than his muscular figure maybe should have moved. "Yes, I am here to give my dear young friend Liam the second course of his lunch," he said in perfect Spanish. "Peas and carrots. Mashed baby corn. Grape juice, perhaps. Very messy. I am afraid that no one in this household dressed in white is permitted to join us."

D-did toddlers normally eat two courses of lunch in a single sitting? That, um… that sounded right. Still, Seneca managed to regain her composure. Despite the man's good looks and charmingly serious personality, she narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't recall hiring anyone like you."

He bowed lightly. "My apologies, for I may have forgotten my manners. My name is Juan. I am filling in for Mermin Caroway today. I am his cousin's son."

Seneca looked the stranger up and down. His… cousin's son. Adopted, perhaps? And who was Caroway? Might he be the original chauffeur of the golf cart? Or was he related to one of the butlers instead? Perhaps even a cook? The name was peripherally familiar, and she thought it matched with the chauffeur's face. She could have sworn he was an only child… No, during the background check, she didn't recall any mention of family. Especially no one who spoke such eloquent Spanish- a detail which Seneca very much would have liked to know during the hiring process. Such a beautiful language.

"I see," Seneca said anyway. She lifted her chin, ignoring the chubby child who continued to kick at her legs. "I want you to know that Liam was a mess when I came to see him today. He is a Buxaplenty. He should appear well-dressed and well-groomed at all times. Even inside the house. Never mind driving me anywhere; I'd much rather he be clean. I can walk."

Juan bowed again. "My most sincere apologies, Señora Cajallena. I shall take the boy to be washed myself."

"I wish him to look presentable," Seneca repeated. "As polished as a china doll, even inside the mansion. He is a Buxaplenty."

"I understand, Señora. It shall be just as you wish." Juan's tone was sincere, his eyes understanding. He waited for her to hand over Liam. Seneca did. Juan moved two steps back. The way he held the child was strange, cradling him beneath the head like a limp thing.

Liam calmed down at once, as though the chauffeur's cousin's son could be more familiar to him than his own mother. Good. That made things easier. Seneca gave Juan a nod to dismiss him. She clipped away down the hall in the other direction on her stabbing heels, her diamonds glittering and swinging at her throat.

In the sitting room (Snow sofas, blood pillows, framed portraits of Buxaplenty ancestors from Orville down), Seneca found the gold-trimmed silk calendar in its place of honor on the wall. Most days were marked with invitations to fancy dinner parties, or days when the country club was hosting a particularly lavish event and more preparations than usual were called for. Next week, she and Bennett were due to attend some prestigious award ceremony for one of the universities a few hours away. Having grown up in their respective upper-class homes mainly tutored and home-schooled by private instructors, neither she nor Bennett had ever attended a real, actual public school. Bennett had spent a few years training in military academy, but the concept of hallways and fellow students remained largely foreign to them both.

Calendar promises, wealthy promises. Seneca counted five months forward, brought her fingernail to rest on April 14th, and frowned. That entire week was blocked off for the cruise she and Bennett were taking up to Alaska. They'd be traveling in company of the childless Tangs- and even more importantly, the Sparklerings, who had further hinted they _might_ invite the Buxaplentys to take a weekend tour on their private yacht in between nights on their houseboat. The Buxaplentys had a great many things, but they had neither a yacht nor a houseboat. A fortune made in railroads had led them to prioritize the expansion of their land-based empire. Ever since she'd married Bennett and moved to California, Seneca had longed to leave the cozy Dimmsdale beach for the open ocean. Cancelling the entire cruise just to go and birth a snotty baby was NOT an OPTION.

Seneca touched two fingertips to the side of her stomach. Well. Maybe he would be early. Liam had been early. She'd read once that smoking helped with that.

And… then what did she plan to do with him? Raise him as the Buxaplenty heir even knowing Bennett would never see the need to give her a child of his own? Briefly, she entertained the idea of suffocating the baby against the mattress in his own crib.

No. No, she'd read and written enough mystery novels to recognize the chance of getting caught, even if she did attempt to pin the blame on sudden infant death syndrome. Adoption, then. Perhaps adoption was the way. Of course, the genre-savvy half of her brain picked apart the flaws in that idea, too. An orphan stumbling into sudden wealth and a family who would raise him out of rags was such an overused cliché.

Seneca drummed her fingers on her leg. Her eyes slid across the sitting room to her coat, resting on its hook beside the door. Brown coat, mink coat, soft coat. Seneca drifted over and plucked a dollar coin from one of the stuffed pockets. She held it on her folded thumb, and closed her eyes.

"He isn't Bennett's," she breathed. "And as long as he's here, there won't be one. But… maybe one day… And then _that_ child could be the one we leave our fortune to." Eyes shut. Squeezed shut, nailed shut, bitten shut. "All right. Heads, I'll leave him on the first island the cruise docks at after he's born. Tails, I'll think about it a little longer."

She flipped. The coin spun through the air, missed her fingers, and buried itself in the thick hairs of the white carpet. Seneca crouched down, patting through the fuzz until her nails clicked against metal. She found herself staring down at the side she didn't want to see.

"That was a practice flip," she decided. She went to toss it a second time, but midway through, the doorbell rang to a familiar tune. _We're In The Money!_ The noise reverberated throughout the mansion. How irritating, that. Seneca fumbled the coin. It bounced off the edge of the glass coffee table with a great clang and skidded underneath the sofa. She knelt down to get it (It was money, after all) while one of the butlers hurried over to open the front doors. Double doors, arched doors. Handles huge.

"Señora Cajallena? Your critique group are here."

She'd gotten the coin. It dropped on the table's edge. There wasn't a critique session scheduled for today. Seneca glanced down at what she was wearing. White dress, simple dress. Angel would be wearing pink. She only wore pink. Star would be elegant, and Crystal would judge her silently from behind her motherly smile.

But she had no choice. She went to greet them. Shoes on tiles. Great red tiles, outlined with squares of cedar wood. Dark spider chandelier, crystals and shaded lights. One white table with cloth and candle to the side. A bench.

There were indeed three women on the mansion doorstep, with gemstones streaked like rain through their neat hair, their wrists laden down with bracelets and watches. First there was Crystal Cashulott, wearing green, her auburn hair all afluff. How original. On the far right stood Star Khaz d'Pozzit with her dark curls and yellow dress. And between them (she always managed to wedge herself into the middle of things) was Angel Kashfirguld, her gloves pulled past her elbows. So blonde, so opposite her sweet-hearted, black-haired husband. Seneca longed for Lennis to up and leave her; she knew she could treat him better.

"Congratulations," Crystal burst the moment the door was open. "We're so excited for you!"

"What?" Seneca stammered out.

"The baby, silly goose." Star tweaked her nose, and Angel kissed her on each cheek. Seneca tightened her fists at her waist. Of course they'd have come to see her. See the Buxaplenty place. Gossip about it later on, especially at Lucilla McDolla's garden party. Which Seneca had _not been invited to_. Once she'd zoomed away on that golf cart, Bennett had certainly wasted no time in spreading news of her pregnancy to the people he thought were her friends. They weren't.

"Everyone's been waiting a decade for you and Bennett to finally have one," Angel crooned. If only she knew. She fluttered over to the couch (Pristine, perfect, always). She tossed one of the red pillows to the side (Carelessly, crookedly, always) and settled in the crack between two cushions. She crossed her feet at the ankles. Straight back, shoulders flat. Plastic smile, molded out of clay. "It will be so nice to have another little boy running around the neighborhood. Indigo has been wanting a playmate for ages."

Crystal batted at her face with a macaw-feathered fan. "I'm certain you won't object to introducing him to my little Opal someday soon, Seneca dear. After all, she _is_ the girl nearest his age. Pageant queen six years running, and she's only five years old. Ooh, can you imagine it?" She squirmed her shoulders and brushed past Seneca into the entry hall. "Thick as thieves, those two will be."

Star's head bobbed like a rowing oar. "And of course, we'll have to keep him away from all the riffraff in the lower neighborhood. Wouldn't want him to become corrupted by the outside world, would we, darlings? Especially not by that rotten little Wendell Bender who terrorizes the playground at the park."

The three of them tittered and giggled together, eyes darting to one another's hair and rings. Crystal twirled her finger through the thin chain of her necklace. Star pasted on another round of lipstick right there in the sitting room. And Angel… was a Kashfirguld.

 _"I'm_ not enjoying this pregnancy," Seneca muttered. Star and Crystal gasped, clasping their hands to the rubies and pearls at their throats. Angel grinned at the taste of drama. Seneca folded her arms. "Morning sickness. Weight gain. It's been a struggle beyond imagining to give up my cigarettes. I can't drink even a little wine. Here I am, a walrus awaiting a fairy godmother to turn her into Cinderella."

"But think of all the exposure," Crystal tried. "The photo opportunities. Why, you'll make magazine covers and be the talk of Dimmsdale for years to come."

Seneca hadn't considered that. The boy in her belly became real all of a sudden, standing at her side a few years down the road. He'd dress in white, of course, and perhaps wear a ruby-studded bow tie to complement Liam's emerald one (even if Liam had to stay up in his room). Hmm… Yes, why not? A beautiful little boy with Oliver's blond hair, her own small nose, and the green eyes they each shared. "Oh, yes. I suppose that's true. It may not be all bad."

"Not to mention," Star prompted, "you'll have a wonderful baby in your arms a few short months from now, with the cutest little curls. Will his eyes be green, do you think?" Her eyes flickered up to the portrait of Orville above the fireplace, in his powdered wig and slick green coat, with dainty Margaret at his side. He'd been painted in front of the ancient Dimmsdale train station, with the engine perched like a condor on the tracks. The town outskirts were dotted with cacti and rocks. In the distance, a single figure dressed in red could be seen racing across the sands, his hands pressed to his face to conceal his middle-class tears. Star's accusing lips pressed outward. "Or if not green, maybe they'll be orange."

"Green, of course," Angel said. She took a second red pillow and tossed it down the couch after the first. "He'll be a tiny little Bennett, as cute as a button."

"Yes," Seneca murmured. "Bennett."

A dog barked on the floor above their heads. Seneca turned towards the stairs, furrowing her brow. She didn't have a dog. Had Bennett bought a dog and forgotten to let her know?

"Have you thought up a name for him?"

Silence. Seneca took a step towards the spiral staircase. The bark came again, lighter this time. Tiny claws scrabbled over smooth marble.

"Seneca, dear?"

Seneca snapped her head around. "What?"

Angel smiled up at her, scarlet lips bursting, hands resting in her lap. They pressed down on her dress. A canyon. "What's your son's name?"

"Oh. Liam. Liam. My good boy." Shaking her head, Seneca floated through the sitting room to the foot of the stairs. The sliding claws were impossible to ignore. She touched the curled tail of the banister, wondering whether she had time to call for the butler before she fainted dead away. At the top of the landing, a little black puppy appeared with a yap and a bounce. Dangling from its studded diamond collar was a sparkling amethyst tag shaped like a turtle.

Crystal and Star cooed and gushed in unison. The puppy wagged its tail. Yipping again, it raced down the stairs as fast as it could run. Even faster than it could run, in fact, since it tripped partway down and hit the bottom in a roll. Leaping to its feet, the puppy bounced to her ankles and thrust its paws up on the hem of her dress. Clean dress, perfect dress. Seneca jerked away. The puppy landed on all fours. With one last bark, it bit the strap of her sandal and pulled.

"What's her name?" Angel demanded, holding her hands out for the puppy without getting off the couch. As if she thought, _Numero Uno_ , that Seneca would actually pick the slobbery thing up, and _Numero Dos,_ that she would allow it in the sitting room in the first place, let alone on the furniture.

Saying "We don't have a puppy" would have been pointless. Bennett had probably bought the puppy months ago. "Um," Seneca said. Her mind fizzled like a spark underwater. Names. Names. Perfect names, stolen names, names all wrong. "Liam. It's a boy dog."

Crystal fanned her cheeks again, lashes fluttering. Dewdrop gemstones clung to the very tips. "Ohh, Liam is your _dog_."

The puppy licked its tongue across her toes. Seneca made a grab for it. It darted away from her and crouched. Its rear end wiggled. She grabbed a second time, caught its head, and pulled the dog towards her. While its paws scurried for a hold, she flipped over its turtle tag. The Buxaplenty logo was printed on one side. On the other was a three-pointed crown symbol.

Seneca released the whining puppy. It jumped away. A few cheerful barks later, it was at the front doors. Shut doors. They didn't stand in its way. It leapt straight through the solid wood.

Seneca jolted to her feet. What? What did she just see?

"Seneca?" Star asked.

… No. Puppies didn't pass straight through doors. There must be a dog door there. In fact, there _was_ a dog door there. Of course there was. There was a dog door. Seneca blinked the question from her eyes. She turned to Crystal again. "Shall I ask Ennui to bake us some cupcakes before he begins work on a three-course seafood dinner?"

"Oh, that would be delightful, wouldn't it, girls?"

Seneca called for the butler to deliver the message to the cook. Once he left, she asked Angel, "How old is Indigo now?"

"Seven, dear. Seven."

The afternoon was pleasant, with little cakes and tea. Compliments about her baby flew back and forth. As Seneca sipped and nodded along with the conversation, her mind trailed a decade into the future. There could be a party in the gardens- the Buxaplenty gardens. Crystal's Opal and Angel's Indigo would be circulating the floor alongside their parents. Mingling nicely, speaking softly. Or Opal would, at least- good girl, sweet girl. Crystal would raise her right. Indigo had flashed his spunky streak from the day he turned two years old. More likely, by seventeen he would have raided a thousand dessert tables, tossing muffins and ice cream dishes to his little band of cohorts.

That wasn't Liam's life. It could never be Liam's life. Not with his glistening black hair. He looked too much like his half-brother Indigo to be revealed to the public now. And Seneca eyeballed the coin on the corner of the glass table, beneath the bronze roses. The adoption process seemed so very far away. There'd be paperwork.

A tiny blond Bennett. Blond, public, champion, prize. Gold. Would Aurum be a good name for him?

Her heart didn't need her "friends." Her writing did. Crystal was encouraging, if a little vain. Star always spotted drips of foreshadowing that came off too heavy-handed. Angel's critiques could snap against Seneca's skin and bury deep into her brain, but she always came from a good place, and she was almost always right.

Cradling her teacup over her pink and white saucer while Crystal babbled on, Seneca allowed herself to daydream further. A critique session in her sitting room full of well-known names, trusted faces, as she balanced a round blond boy on her knee.

A truck horn blared outside, and the daydream shattered. Babies were not quiet like Bennett's prized hunting trophies and mounted taxidermies, or a polished manuscript in her hands. Babies were not for the public eye. Maybe when they were older. Adolescents, perhaps, charming visitors with wit garnered from years of work and study.

Crystal, Star, and Angel left late in the afternoon. Much too late, in Seneca's mind. She took a break to smoke in her smoking room (No matter what her ob/gyn recommended) and finally climbed the padded stairs and crossed the mansion to her office. She flicked on the lights. Three went on above, and two lamps on either side of her typewriter. White light; she'd always insisted on that. Brightness helped her work. She even had a massive window at her back. Silver was a comfort. Golden brown was a drug.

No one touched her typewriter. Seneca didn't even allow the maids and butlers in here, and they respected her with relief. She walked around the desk to read the first few lines she'd left there. Leering metal, on the typewriter. Bitter. Cold. She'd tried to write a child character, for once. It didn't really work. It didn't come across as real.

In a huff, Seneca tore the page out. Threaded in a new one. Blank white, snow white, precious white. She sat. Smoothed her dress. Twice. Warm hands, sticky hands, hopeless hands. She adjusted the spiral cord of the phone beside her. For an hour, she tapped words out, deleted others with white-out, and retyped entire pages. By the time she was done, her dialogue was floppy and her plot hadn't advanced more than two steps forward.

The story was about a princess who had been betrothed a week ago to a man she didn't know. Although she was ready to accept the new life before them, he made it difficult by jumping out of carriages and climbing down from castle windows every time marriage was brought up. Over and over, the princess had to keep go and fetching him back- once from a dragon, and once from a band of thieves and robbers, even. She had to remind her prince that marriage was his duty. And in the end, he realized she was right, and he fell in love with her too.

Or at least, that's how things were supposed to go. Seneca had convinced herself that Princess Iskilee deserved to be her titular protagonist. And yet, the story kept veering off in another direction, trying to tell itself from the point of view of Remilius Remington Rembrandt, crown prince of a country based off a more art-obsessed version of the Netherlands. The boy who wanted to investigate the new technology of gunpowder and turn the tide of a war. A boy being forced into a marriage he didn't want. A boy who found Princess Iskilee perhaps a bit needy, and always confusing. It sounded like his story would be wonderful to tell.

Seneca stared down at the partial manuscript stacked between her hand and the phone. Bennett was right about one thing. Even if he didn't love her, she could never afford to leave him. Writing was her everything, but it was so, so difficult to make a living on it alone.

And she was crying. Her head hit her arms, arms hit her desk, and she shook so much that the baby must have convinced himself his world was ending around him. Seneca groped blindly for the tissues, and found only the spiral cord of the phone.

If her mother caught her crying, she'd be scolded for a week. If the rest of her critique group ever figured out that Bennett hadn't lain with her since the honeymoon, the puzzle pieces would slowly come to light. Crystal would be horrified but dismissive. Star would demand an investigation in order to turn up the unborn baby's true father. Perhaps Angel would even figure out that her husband had not been wholly faithful to her, when he'd unknowingly left Seneca pregnant with Liam and they'd never met eyes again.

There was no one she could talk to about this. No one but the typewriter. Perhaps she'd abandon her current project and start a new one. One she would write without self-editing and judgement, just to let her feelings spill all out. No one ever came into her office. No one except for her and on the rarest of rare occasions-

The glass door creaked open. There hadn't been a knock. Seneca jerked up her head, grabbing again for the tissues. She sent the box flying. Oh no. She spun around in her chair, rubbing at her face with the diamond on her wedding ring.

"How goes the writing, darling?" Bennett asked. Careless talk, absent talk, worthless talk. He stood with his hands buried in his bulging pockets. Always did; Seneca didn't have to look. Every so often he'd come in here, and every so often he'd repeat the exact same motions.

"Go away," she whispered. Fox voice, cornered fox voice. The hunter stifled a laugh.

"You know there isn't anywhere I'd rather count the money than by your side."

"Drop dead," she muttered.

Bennett paused. "What?"

"Never mind." Smothered guilt, smothered pain.

Quiet seconds, short seconds, few seconds. Bennett walked around her desk. Seneca clenched the seat of her chair with the backs of her knees. With each step, his heels dug into the wood floor before his toes thumped down. The sound softened when he reached the rubber mat that bore her rolling chair, but not by much. Seneca looked up. He stood above her, hands pocketed still.

"Snooty," he said.

Vixen tail, bushing tail, flattened ears. Seneca shot to her feet and threw her arms around his neck. For while the fox feared the hunter, the fox was in love with her own self-destruction. Bennett stumbled back, bumping his elbow on the paneled wood wall. He winced and reached between their pressed bodies to rub the arm with his other hand. It made her cry, Seneca. She buried her face into his shoulder and shook herself half to pieces. He smelled of ash and smoke from the fireplace. His skin felt like cardboard.

"What-?" Bennett forced out, "Are you… doing?"

"I love you! I did it because Oliver is your twin, but I pretended he was you! And- and- There's a baby now, but…" Her palm dug into his cheek. "Benny… It's almost like having our own."

The smile that played across his lips when he gazed down at her was pure and sweet. He set his hands to her sides. Holding her, thrilling her, until she gasped like a heaving landed fish. "Oh. Mm… I look forward to it, darling. An heir of our own. Thank money he's a Buxaplenty."

"Not yours," through her tears.

"May as well be. Oliver and I are identical. Hm. What will we name it, if you don't miscarry?"

"Name what?" Her eyes were on his lips. Pale lips, chapped lips, perfect lips because they were his.

"The baby. I've never liked the name Bennett Junior."

"Oh, the baby." Seneca loosened her arms from his neck. Her hands dropped to his. Bennett started. He tried to remove them from her sides, as if he'd only just realized what he was doing and was mortified his own wife had caught him handling her. No. Seneca slid them down to her waist and kept his gloved fingers against her skin. "I don't know yet. I don't mind."

His smile strained. "I suppose we'll see."

"I suppose we will." Her focus flicked between his lips and his eyes. Misty eyes, precious eyes. Always distant eyes. Bennett had a quiet soul, and he loved to settle back and think. When he began to think, he began to drift.

In an instant, they were young again. Adolescents on a balcony. She'd been wearing gold, he'd been wearing silver. He sat on the railing, the trailing ivy vines along the walls tangling over his shoulders. A book in his lap (Closed, bookmarked right) and she knew he was the one for her because of that. Oliver was rough-and-tumble, all playfully flirtatious and blind to the consequences. Oliver was the kind to dog-ear books and leave them upturned on arms of chairs. But Bennett understood the importance of treating books right.

"You write?" he'd asked her, peering over his glasses (He'd worn glasses back then).

"Some." Her hair, naturally blonde but dyed even blonder, was braided in a fairy circlet that day.

"Fantasy?"

Her heart had quickened when he'd asked, and she'd stepped a little closer to brace her arms against the railing and lean over. She was tall; he was taller. "Mostly romance."

"Oh," like a plunging stone.

"Romance in the fantasy genre," she'd corrected. "You know. Princes and princesses. Second world high fantasy."

He lifted the book he'd been reading so she could see its cover. Seneca had never forgotten the pleading shimmer to his eyes. "Are there dragons?"

"Not yet, but I might take a request from a man I really liked."

"I love dragons. And taxidermy."

Hm. Who could have guessed that she'd love a pretend dragon too?

"What are you thinking about?" Bennett murmured in the present day. The afternoon light streaking in from the window behind her caught his face like a feather. Seneca breathed in the scent of fireplace on his suit, and wondered if the real reason he'd slipped up to her bedroom was to roast marshmallows again. Oh, cheeky Bennett. He loved sweets almost as much as he loved shellfish. He was always sneaking marshmallows under his coat. Graham crackers and chocolate too when he thought he could get away with it. Sometimes Ennui caught him.

"Mmm… I'm thinking of smoke. Hunting. Cigarettes. Two dragons."

"One dragon and one beautiful golden princess," Bennett corrected. His eyes darted over to the office door. The dozen glass panels in the white wood showed only the empty hallway beyond. He shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. His fingers fluttered, threatening to pull away. Seneca gripped his wrists.

"Are you happy you married me?" she asked.

Bennett blinked. "Of course I am. You're wonderful."

She fingered his rings, each one less impressive than hers. "How wonderful?"

"Depends," he said, his tone a little thoughtful. His hands traced out the shape of her hips. Gentle feel, patient feel. "Mm… Do you suppose we're being watched? Because if we aren't…" Bennett caught her chin with his thumb, resting his forefinger on the underside. Seneca gasped. She stepped closer- couldn't get closer if she tried. He was right there. An embrace. Foreheads bumped. Seneca breathed in. With slow fingers, she untwisted his tie. Deep eyes, swimming eyes, endless eyes. Smiling eyes. Shutting eyes. Her foot slid behind her. He lifted her mouth to his.

The phone blared on the desk behind her. Bennett jumped, whirling towards her office door. His hands flew to block his face. Seneca closed herself in.

"Sorry," she said. "The phone."

"The phone," Bennett said, pink instead of gold. Spinning around, he took up a place by her window. He stared into the rear gardens without moving the slightest muscle.

The phone. Sloth hands. Seneca could have let it ring itself to death, but she wanted to know who'd had the unfortunate timing to interrupt them. Claw fingers, talon fingers. She took up the phone and brought it to her ear. "Yes? Hello?"

"Hello." Woman's voice, younger voice, nervous voice. "Do I have the Buxaplenty mansion?"

"You do." Seneca did not give her own name. Not yet. There might be gossip, and if there was, it may benefit her to play the part of maid. Behind her, she sensed Bennett hunch into his shoulders.

"Um. Could someone come down to our clinic? I'm calling this number because someone from the Buxaplenty mansion was brought in- Hit by a car at the dam. Small, black hair? He's alive, but- Could someone come down here?" The laughter was crooked. Distracted. Forced.

"Oh," Seneca said. Liam. "Oh. Of course. Thank you." She hadn't been to the clinic before, so she asked the woman on the other end to rattle off the address. Even after requesting it be repeated, Seneca found herself staring at the tip of her pen. Something wasn't right. The street names didn't match her expectations. She'd never been to the hospital with Liam- Liam was born at home. But this address… these street names… That was the wrong side of the city. The hospital may have moved. That couldn't be right. Yet the woman on the other end confirmed.

Wrong place, wrong place. Seneca lowered the phone back onto the hook. For fifteen seconds, she stood with folded arms. Then she turned. "I just received a call. On this actual phone."

"Did you now?" Bennett asked, shifting through a stack of Benjamins in his hands.

"It's about Liam. He's in the hospital. Apparently he was hit by a car." One arm stayed folded, but she lifted the other, flicking her wrist back. "How did they know he's ours? Has he gotten out before? Who else knows about him?"

Bennett's brow tightened with a crease. "Oh, yes. Oh, right. No, this isn't good at all. I will have to have someone look into this." His eyes widened in the corners. The Benjamins returned to his pocket. "Mm. If word gets out that we have an illegitimate child residing within these walls, we can kiss a quarter of our fortune, sponsor deals, and entertainment guests good-bye."

Seneca stumbled back with each item he listed, holding her hand to her heart. She clutched the corner of her desk. "Well," she stuttered, "I-it's an odd call anyway. Perhaps it may turn out to be a hoax. I'm going to smoke, slip into something more presentable for outside, and head to the hospital in case this really is about Liam."

"Oh?"

"I want to know. I mean, he's Liam."

Bennett pulled up his tie. "I'll send the chauffeur to prepare the helicopter."

"No, that will attract far too much attention. The limo will be fine."

"Yes," he said, already through the door.

The cigarette break wasn't as relaxing as it ought to be. When it wasn't at her lips, Seneca twirled it between her fingers, pacing the smoking room from one corner to another. How had Liam left the mansion without anyone stopping him? Someone must have seen him. A butler, cook, maid…

Or Juan.

Seneca started pacing faster. Juan. The Juan she hadn't recognized. The last one she'd seen with Liam. Her Liam, her moon child, her very good boy.

Liam should have stayed inside. Had Juan turned his back a moment too long? Or… and her author heart began to skip. A kidnapping. Kidnapping- should have seen it coming. Foreign face, unrelated face, let him get away. Seneca crushed her cigarette into its ashtray and went to change into her purple dress.

"Is the limo ready?" she asked Bennett when she found him in a hall.

"I didn't see the chauffeur."

"Oh, right," Seneca muttered. "He went off somewhere. Did you ask his cousin's son?"

Bennett gave her a sideways stare. "The chauffeur was not at his post. There was nothing else I could do."

They held a moment of silence to reflect on this most unfortunate loss.

"I suppose I could… walk to the hospital," Seneca said begrudgingly. "Even though it's an entire eight blocks away."

Bennett bristled at the suggestion. "I can't allow you to do that. Someone might see you, and then wonder whether we've fallen on hard times. Especially if you're caught in those 10-carat diamond shoes."

"Then you ought to have purchased the 18-carat ones for our half-anniversary like I asked."

"So you keep telling me," he grumbled. He ran his hands through the air above his perfect butter cowlicks, very careful not to muss the spikes up with his fingers. "Mm, yes… Eee… I'll have to drive you myself. In the _green_ convertible, unfortunately. The red one is in the shop after its hood was dinged by a stone, and I sold the white one to Dimmadome last May."

Inwardly, Seneca gagged. Nonetheless, she maintained her poise. "There are some days when we all have to make sacrifices. Let's go to the hospital. In… the green convertible." She drew the purple sticky note from the pocket of her dress. "Here are the directions."

Bennett took the note and nodded once. "I used to drive as a teenager. Let's go, then."

They were only two minutes from the driveway when a pair of police cars zipped past them. The sirens weren't shrieking, but they caught the eye nonetheless.

"What was that about?" Bennett mused aloud. The wind ruffled his hair.

Seneca's eyes were further up the road. She watched both cars veer left. First into the turn lane, then into the thin parking lot. She glanced down at the sticky note in her hand.

Bennett had to stop at a red light. Once it blinked green, he turned the convertible into the same lot. He eased up on the gas. They coasted across rows of painted parallel lines. Gray lines, faded lines, broken lines. "This isn't the hospital."

"No," Seneca said, staring at the sign above the doors. "This is the vet clinic."

"Police."

She saw he was right. There was a man outside the clinic doors, dressed in a white shirt, a purple cumberband wrapped around his waist. Two officers were arguing with him, while a third watched with one hand braced against the nearer squad car. The man's tight black suit was gone, but with the flying ponytail, there was no mistaking that face. No one could forget that face.

Juan.

"Stop the car."

Bennett lifted his hands from the steering wheel. "We are stopped."

Seneca shoved open her door. She did not run, for doing so would not be proper, but she did straighten her ring. Then she marched through the parking lot. One of the officers noticed her and tried to warn her away, but Seneca said, "It's all right, I know him," and she was a Buxaplenty, so they let her through.

Juan was in tears. Scalding tears, acid tears. His hand wouldn't leave his cheek. Nonetheless, his chest didn't heave, and his legs didn't wobble. Seneca stopped a yard away from him.

"Where is Liam?"

"He- He-" The words bubbled in his throat. "He-"

Seneca snapped her fingers. Time wasters, time suckers. "I'll ask again. Where. Is. Liam?"

At this, Juan burst into all fresh tears. _"¡Qué rápido pasa la vida!_ He is inside! On the machine- the breathing machine they hold in the back. The people will not let me into the back. There are rules. They say I am not an employee and not the family!"

His story was full of holes, because why would a vet clinic concern themselves with an injured child? Perhaps the clinic had been that much closer to the dam, and the hospital overloaded. Yet despite the flaws in logic, Juan seemed to be her best bet at finding Liam. More importantly, finding Liam before anyone else did and put two and two together. "Right. Release him, officers. He's with me. I apologize for any trouble he may have caused you."

The officers exchanged glances, but backed away. They didn't step inside the squad car, but waited there on the sidewalk. Watching. Someone must have called them; Juan must have been raving outside for some time. He lifted his head. His eyes met Seneca's, so pale blue they were almost… violet…

Seneca blinked, pressing down the warmth in her cheeks. Again. It really wasn't fair, that such a middle-class stranger could have this sort of effect on her. A captivating power.

She took a step to the side so he could open the door. He blinked back, then did. Seneca swept inside the clinic, glancing along the row of plastic chairs beneath the wide window. Three doors on the right-hand wall looked like they may be examination rooms to meet with patients and clients in private. If Seneca recalled correctly from researching a vet clinic once, those rooms connected to a hallway where little things such as medicine bottles and centrifuges were stored. Perhaps a break area, and of course there would be kennels somewhere or other. Behind that hallway, the technicians and assistants did their actual work, with the vet on duty popping in and out of the surgery room as appropriate.

The place seemed deserted, apart from a receptionist behind the wide front desk and one man browsing file folders in the open room just behind. On her left side were shelves stacked high with dog and cat food. All kinds. Cans, tins, bags. A potted plant guarded one corner.

But no sign of Liam, bent in half and picking at a cast on his leg. No Liam sipping from the water fountain, or coloring in his notebook with his favorite green pencil stub. Seneca fingered one of the diamonds on her neck with mounting confusion. Could Juan be right? Was Liam in the back of the clinic right now? Lying in a cardboard box on a counter with an assistant hunched over him, pressing his ghostly lips against a transparent tube? Seneca had researched vet clinics once, when she'd found the need to write a scene where her protagonist did the same thing in an attempt to save an anencephalic kitten. The kitten hadn't made it.

This was not a place for human children. Seneca swept her eyes around one final time, snapping up the traces of cat and dog hair on the ground. The walls were gray, the floor tiles white. Who would bring her good boy to a place like this?

After straightening her dress, Seneca walked up to the woman behind the front desk. Juan followed her, but Seneca did the question popping. "I'm here for Liam."

The two workers looked at each other. One had a name tag that read Cindy, and the other's name tag read Forrest. Forrest clenched his teeth. "Is Liam the little black lab with the white splash between his eyes?"

Seneca sniffed. "Liam is not a dog. I was told he'd be here."

Juan, close at her arm (Too close, so close, warm close) shook his head.

"Mrs. Buxaplenty," said Cindy. Gentle voice, gentle touch. "We can take you to the back room if you like. I'm afraid he's about to cross the rainbow bridge."

Juan shook his head again. A stapler and cup of pens further down the desk fell to the ground. "No," he said. "That is not the bridge. Wrong bridge. It is just a story- a fairy tale."

"Liam," Seneca said, "is a human child. This shouldn't be difficult to understand. Was a dog hit by a car? Is that what happened? Or was Liam injured? How much do we owe you?"

Juan raised his hand. "The dog is mine."

Seneca swiveled on her heels. _"What?_ Is that what I came all the way out here for? You knew who I was talking about. Why would you sap my time like this? You- you brought your dog inside my home, without my permission?"

Juan swiped both hands down his cheeks, swatting off the tears. "I do not have time for this," he snapped, but his voice squeaked at the end. He snatched a pen from his left pocket and clenched it like a spear. "The dog is mine! I must see my boy."

Cindy glanced left and right. "The tag said Buxaplenty… You're not one."

 _"Let me see him!"_ Juan screamed in Spanish. Papers and binders erupted in all directions. One hand clenched his head, as though a sweeping migraine had kicked him with a hoof. Twisting brain, tortured brain. The next thing he shrieked was meaningless. He stabbed the pen forward. This time, "Let me see my boy at once, or my appendix may rupture!"

Cindy shrank back in her wheeled chair. Seneca squinted, stuck on the 'a' word he'd shouted. Forrest took a step forward, his hands raised. "I'm sorry, sir, but the Buxaplentys-"

"No!" Juan waved his pen through the air. "Liam! Liam!"

Seneca shifted to one side to avoid his frantic hand. She'd never seen anyone get so upset over a dumb dog before, so she observed his movements closely in case she decided to use this scene someday. Forrest cleared his throat.

"Okay. Sir-"

The front doors of the clinic flew open, and one of the police officers ran in. Juan jerked around, pen jabbing like a sword. His muscles rippled. Light zinged along his arm. It glinted off the rings he wore on each knuckle of his right hand. "Halt, I beg of you! You must do as I say and let me into the back at once! Read these perfect lips of mine: Only I can reverse what is happening!"

"Sir," soothed the officer, reaching for her hip. Juan flashed his pen. His chest heaved. His eyes rolled about the way a wild horse's would.

"You are all fools! _Idiotas!_ You must let me go. Only I hold the power to save him. _I am Liam's fairy godfather!"_

Fairy…

Seneca's mind skipped over the word, then zipped back to read it through again. Fairy?

Godfather?

 _Liam's?_

Juan lashed his pen through the air. Light shinged off his rings again. The officer flew backwards, bowling over the man behind her. Thunder crashed outside. There hadn't been rain, but now it was dark. The wind picked up its howling. Lightning zipped through the sky… _after_ the thunder, oddly enough.

"Juan?" Seneca choked out. Muddled questions, many questions. A thrill at the thought. She closed her fingers around his arm. Hot skin, stinging skin, magic skin. Juan jerked away. The lightning exploded again.

And the power. Went. Out.

Lightless. The front window gave just enough light to see.

There was one second of silence. Then the clinic burst into a frenzy. Barking dogs, bursting doors, technicians and assistants scrambling around in search of patients. Were there flashlights? People yelling about generators. Trying to stay calm. Absolutely not. The police officers were still on the ground, stunned from their fall. In the middle of the chaos, Juan stood frozen, his pen pointed at Seneca's heart like a loaded pistol. The horror in his eyes told her his brain had just caught up to his mouth.

"Fairy godfather," she breathed. Her hair waved behind her in the whirling indoor wind. "Oh, that's beautiful."

"No." He clapped his hands to his mouth. The pen fell to the floor. Click click tile roll. It skidded about in the whirlwind tearing into the clinic. Juan backed away, shrinking into his white shirt. "No. No, no, no, no, no. This cannot be happening! I did not mean at all what I said. It is an exception. An accident!"

"You said fairy godfather. Genius. My story needs one of those."

"I was wishbirthed," he sobbed. "The seal to my _papá_ was never closed, and my emotions need no wand to affect the world. But I am no _bruja_ or _luz mala._ My heritage does not define me. I am good!" Both hands went to his temples now. His face spiraled into pain. "Aye! It happens!" With that, he flung himself past her, streaking for the row of examination room doors. "Liam! Liam, my precious, my beloved! Can you hear me back there?"

Seneca leaned back on her heels, clutching the diamonds at her neck. How could he be a fairy? Shouldn't he be small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, or shouldn't he at least have wings?

"Make a wish!" Juan slid down to the floor. His back was twitching uncontrollably, as though some sort of snake or ferret had crammed itself between his shoulders and his shirt. Perhaps one had, and it was eating him- his hands were shrinking, legs were curling in. "Liam, my godson, my son, my Liam, my baby, _mi joven amigo,_ if you were but awake and could draw me a wish…"

Briefly silent. Screech of pain. When Seneca glanced over, Juan was on his knees. He clenched his head as though his brain were leaking. His tongue lolled. His clothing rippled. Second screech- "It happens! Stop it, I say! The link, it destroys me!"

Suddenly, ninjas dressed in sky blue uniforms burst out of nowhere, swinging in on ropes and crashing through the window at the front. Seneca flung up her arms, bracing herself for shards that… never… fell? She risked a peek. The window had a hole in its middle now, but no glass covered the floor. It was like the ninjas had just appeared from thin air. They ran forward despite the half-dark, seizing Juan by the shoulders. He cried out and tried to stand. Didn't stop them from twisting his arms behind him. One ninja knocked him to his knees. Another slapped him on the back of the head. Juan fell forward, chin colliding with the tile. His pen lay a few feet away, between him and Seneca's right foot.

Wait. That didn't make any sense. Ninjas in a vet clinic? An American vet clinic in a medium-sized town? To attack her butler's cousin's son who also happened to be a giant fairy fluent in Spanish? What kind of establishment was this?

There were so many noises. There wasn't any window glass. Randomly there were ninjas. Seneca pressed herself to the side of the front desk and decided to forget whatever it was that was going on. If it didn't make her money, it wasn't worth her time.

"Stop it, stop it!" Juan sobbed when one ninja forced a knee against his back. He looked so small and frail beneath them. "The appendix link bleeds me out! My Liam! We must save my Liam, or I shall go mad!"

"I am afraid," boomed a new voice, "it is far too late for that."

Louder than the thunder. Sharper than the lightning. Goosebumps crawled along Seneca's arms. She looked up against the wind. The clinic was filled with so many ninjas, they practically blocked all the light from the broken window. If Cindy, Forrest, and the police officers were still around, they were wisely keeping hidden. Probably under the desk.

As the rumble of the voice faded, the sea of blue ninjas began to part. An enormous man with bulging muscles and an amazing tan (even in the dark) stepped out from among them. His white hair lay cropped in a crew cut. Fitting, since unlike the ninjas, he dressed in a simple army uniform: a green tank top and camo pants. He cradled a thick walking stick with a very sharp point on one end.

 _"Juandissimo,"_ the newcomer thundered. Did he control the winds? They began to die down once he started speaking.

"Jorgen, _por favor!_ " He pronounced it "Yorgen". Gentle accent, panicked accent, comforting accent. Juan tried to raise his head, only for one of the ninjas to shove him back down with his (her?) boot. One hand, groping hand, desperate and defeated hand. "Please, I beg of you! Save my Liam from the power outagae! I am so sorry. It shall never happen again, I swear it! Aye, you cannot torture me so. I cannot stand to lose another one… Jorgen, _por favor_ , if I could but have another chance…"

Focusing on Juan's face became a sudden struggle. Seneca fought not to blink, because every time she did, his features only grew blurrier. On her fourth blink, Juan… _changed_ there beneath the ninjas. His height was lost in an instant. The black ponytail remained. His muscles bulged beneath his shirt (which had begun to tear at the seams), but his body was much too small, like a child's. A little golden crown floated above his head.

Seneca blinked a fifth time. Oh. Oh! Four wings dangled (limp wings, twisted wings) from Juan's shoulder blades. Beauty wings, shimmer wings, dragonfly wings. His eyes glowed with purple fire. Tears as red as blood dripped down his nose and burned with dusky light on the floor. Fairy godfather, trapped and beaten.

 _"Por favor,"_ he whimpered again in the growing quiet.

Jorgen, the man in the army uniform, thunked the flat end of his walking stick against the ground. "Juandissimo, on the matter of neglecting your godchild long enough to allow his utterly gruesome and not-all-that-worthy-of-applause death, Fairy law is always very clear."

 _"Sí…"_

Jorgen nodded. He took one earthshaking step forward. The winds peeled around his great body. Seneca clenched her eyes shut. "Because of what you have done," Jorgen growled, "I am left with little choice. Da Rules command that I must sentence you directly to… Level 15 probation."

The ninjas gasped in unison. One began a protest, which died again with a feeble squeak.

"I am sorry," Juan managed to croak. "But, it is with a smile that I shall face whatsoever Level 15 probation has in store for me. For this shall not free me from the utmost shame which my pain and guilt have placed upon my heart cavity."

"Hmm… Your keen efforts in working with Liam Buxaplenty have shown us that the age of four is far too young for godparents to attend to puny human children properly." Jorgen tapped his walking stick against one palm. "You have allowed your godchild to fade away in your arms, and I must punish you most severely for this."

 _"Sí! Por favor,_ I deserve it so! For if not for me, then Liam would not have…"

Seneca peered at the scene before her again. It hadn't gone away. Juan was up on his knees, hands clasped in pleading towards the great man hunkering over him. The ninjas… they weren't really ninjas. Fairies. Boy fairies, girl fairies, adult fairies in pale blue uniforms. Little fairies, shorter than they'd first appeared. Jorgen was the exception, stocky and bulging like a mountain. No wings, but he had a floating crown above his head like most of the others. Power filled his veins. One fairy who wore a purple tunic flew up to the lead fairy's shoulder.

"The appendix link is still active, sir," he reported. His voice squeaked. "Awaiting your orders. Do you want us to operate on what remains of the dog?"

Juan continued to weep on the floor. His head… his head was all wrong. Seneca didn't really want to look, but unable to flee and unwilling to speak up, she forced herself to observe all the information she could about her current surroundings. Juan's head had cracked open just above his eyes, as though the top swiveled on a hinge. Green liquid, interspersed with streaks of red, dribbled along the pencil-thin tile grout. River through a canyon, crashing in a storm.

Jorgen sighed. He lowered his upright walking stick, clutching it lengthwise between his hands again. "Yes. Wipe the minds of any witnesses and remove young Liam Buxaplenty's appendix. Have it brought to my office in Fairy World. With haste! And preserved properly, this time. I will deal with it once I finish here."

"No," Seneca said. Liam's word, stolen word, dying word. Forrest hissed to shush her from underneath the desk. The attention that swiveled towards her nearly dropped her to her knees. Silent army, fairy army. One of the fairies had his fingers clenched in Cindy's hair, pressing a yellow canister against the side of her head. Watching. Waiting.

Seneca drew in a long breath, and looked Jorgen directly in the eyes. "I don't know who you think you are, but if you're going to harvest body parts from my dead son, I expect you to make out a check to me first."

This led to silence, and silence led to anger. Spit flew from Jorgen's teeth. It splattered Seneca's cheek. Jorgen hefted his walking stick and jammed the end with the point near her eyes. It glowed with searing yellow light. Seneca flinched away. Golden bright, stabbing sight. Flicker high, flicker low, growing new points like thistle thorns.

 _"No!"_ Juan flung himself between Seneca and the walking stick. His wings beat like a broken marionette onstage. Swiping wings, angel wings. His throat bobbed up and down in time with his flailing arms. "Jorgen, you cannot go through with the wiping of her memories! She is with child!" He fell to his knees again, lifting his clasped hands. "Think of the little _niño!_ El Rules forbid it!"

Sparking staff, blinking staff, looking like a sudden star. Jorgen glared down at Juan. Juan stared up at him. Anger faded to silence once again. Unhappy movement, halting movement. Grinding teeth. Seneca flapped her hand at her face, trying to keep from going so lightheaded that she'd faint.

Jorgen lowered his walking stick. "Then there is little choice. Juandissimo, I must reassign you as temporary guardian over Mrs. Buxaplenty until her child has been born."

 _"Sí,_ Señor Jorgen," Juan squeaked. _"Muchas gracias."_

"What?" Seneca narrowed her eyes. "Did you ruffians hear me? I'll have you know that I expect full payment! Magic is entirely real. Liam is now dead- after having a curse dropped on him that turned him into a dog, if I'm understanding this correctly. Why, I could sue you all for the stress this _incident_ and subsequent therapy will put me under. What about payback? What about justice?"

Jorgen's hand shot forward. He grabbed Juan in his fist and squeezed until the fairy shrieked and started spitting pleas. Then Jorgen jerked his hand over to Seneca. She flinched back.

"I am not here to wait around and answer all your pathetically obvious questions. That is what _he_ is for. You can ask him. As for me, I have two appendixes to separate and a great deal of paperwork to do."

He dropped Juan to the floor, then crashed his walking stick (Star staff, sun staff) down too. The force of it sent a shockwave across the clinic. Seneca tumbled, smacking tile with her bare palms (Clean hands, filthy floor). She took a moment to cough and heave. Gash on her face. Gash from her ring. Big diamond, clumsy diamond. Her dress was dirty. She'd have to send this Jorgen man the bill. When she raised her head again, all the fairies were gone.

All the fairies except for one. Juan. Juan sat beside his fallen pen, sobbing into his hands. The clinic lights flickered on and off. First too bright. Then much too dim. The drinking fountain behind the shelves of pet food started to spray. Off again. On again. As predictable as breathing.

Seneca, for her part, climbed to her feet. No point in sitting on a dirty floor if she didn't have to, after all. "Oh, get up," she said to Juan, prodding him with the toe of her shoe. He felt solid, with blood and bones. "Don't fairy mothers ever tell their children not to cry over spilled milk?"

Juan lifted his head from his trembling hands. "Spilled milk?"

She shrugged. "It's an idiom."

Without breaking eye contact, Juan slid his hand along the floor and grasped his pen. Had it always had a star on its back end? The clinic lights came on, and stayed. The water fountain shut off. He tore off a strip of his shirt and dabbed it against his eyes. "Spilled milk, you say?"

Seneca sized him up, which didn't take very long. His face and muscled upper body remained a little handsome, but it was different now. Stranger now. Like he were a drawing of an adult man crumpled in half at the bottom, with arms and legs too short for his adult body.

She tapped her nails against one elbow. "So… You came to see Liam today because you were assigned to be his fairy godfather."

Juan sighed. He didn't look angry. He looked… tired. Drooping, dented, shell of himself. He pushed into the air. Four wings fluttered, pair by pair. _"Sí,_ Señora _._ I must apologize for my most unfortunate performance."

"Mm. And you turned Liam into a dog. Didn't you?"

His shoulders heaved in a shrug that answered everything and more. "Hmm," Seneca said. She digested this information for all of three seconds. Her nails tapped again. "Let me ensure I understand. You used magic to turn my son into a dog. A _Cinderella_ story for a child's fantasy. He ran out into the road, and now he's dead. Dead as a dog's toenail."

"I should have been watching him more intently," Juan whispered. He lifted a hand as though to smack himself in the cheek, but quivered and let it drop before it could come in contact with his handsome skin. _"Sí."_

Seneca rolled her eyes. She itched her nails along her shoulder. Her nails weren't made for itching, but the prickling along her skin was beginning to drive her crazy. "So, I understand that I now have five months to enjoy your charming company before my memory is erased of fairy knowledge entirely. With magic. My pregnancy saved me because your commander, or captain, or boss, or whoever that was, took pity on my unborn baby."

 _"Sí."_

She considered this too, one hand resting over the slight bulge of her stomach. "And… you're going to become my unborn son's fairy godfather, and watch after him when I'm not around, too. Is that right?"

Juan hunched into his shoulders. "If that is what I am asked to do by Jorgen, then _sí._ It is not usual for godparents to tend to a child so young. Liam… He was a special case. There are certain environments which are poison, and when there is great money and influence clearly seen in a child's future, there can be times when the Amity program makes exceptions to some of the more usual rules. I stayed by Liam's side from the time he was two years old. He always did so love to draw."

He left it at that. Burning eyes, judging eyes.

"I want to see Liam now. The dog."

Juan's mouth tightened. "No. I am forbidden from allowing that. The memories of death are far more difficult to erase when they are tied so tightly with passions of the heart."

Oh well. That about summed it up then, didn't it? Seneca glanced both left and right. Now that Jorgen and the whirlwind had left and Juan had stopped crying, the clinic front was looking back to normal. Cindy and Forrest were slumped in their chairs, cheeks pressed to papers on the desk. They snored in unison. The two police officers slept on the floor, their bodies stiff and straight like logs. A muffled noise behind one of the other doors suggested a lone fairy was at work, shaking a yellow canister in her hand and using it to wipe minds clean. A dog barked. Deep bark, big dog.

Folding her hands behind her back, Seneca walked towards the front doors. Juan bobbed after her, his wingbeats nearly silent. He lifted his wand, and the door directly in front of her swung open. Unseen hand, magic hand. Juan flicked his wand again, and glittered as he changed his form. His legs grew longer. His wings shriveled and disappeared.

"You look almost human," she said.

Juan looked at her, looked the type of man who would enthuse over the compliment. Eye bags sagging. Tired fairy. After three seconds, he said, _"Gracias."_

Outside, Seneca tilted back her head. The sun cut through her eyelashes. She breathed the scents of summer. Green leaves, sticky heat. The two police cars were still at the curb, an officer sleeping inside each of them. No sign of Bennett or the convertible. Seneca debated throwing a fit, but then decided to walk home. It would allow her exercise, publicity, and a chance to talk to Liam's fairy. Besides that, the mansion sat only eight blocks away.

She started across the parking lot. "What's it like to be magical?"

Juan rubbed his eyes with both fists. He followed, but slowly. "Ah. Fairies were always meant to guide the lost and lonely hearts of mortal lands. The Fairies with the schooling and licenses act as guardians to those who are in need. We care for them in their youth, to make them happy, and go to help another child and leave the first with the memory of happiness, although the memories of Fairy magic must be taken for our own protection. We call ourselves 'fairy godparents.' I myself entered such a world the moment I was born; my _mamá_ works the Wandpoint Galaxy to this day. My _papá_ , he is not with her. They speak Elrulian mostly there." A sniffle, and a second. "Yes. It is wonderful to hold great power, but there are Rules which keep our peace. It is hard, each time, to love and leave a mortal child."

"Yes, but…" Seneca shaped an imaginary globe with her hands. "To be able to control a force capable of creating, destroying, or changing something at your command. Instantly, everywhere. As an author, I find that incredible. The ability to create life!"

Juan said nothing. His walking movements were fluid, as though he hovered above the ground even without his wings, but when Seneca glanced down, she could see him struggling to place one foot in front of the other. Each step went from heel to toe. Pushed. Forced. Unfamiliar.

She lowered her arms. "I wonder if you could use your magic to help me with my research. I write about dragons. I've never liked the way I've built them."

"It is possible I may consider it. You are under my watch now. It means we shall have plenty of time in need of passing together." Juan wiped his face again. "Forgive me for my tears. I am so, so very sorry about your son. Liam had a heart of melted chocolate. He always drew places to visit, and I would take him there. He drew animals I read to him in picture books for fairy children, or animals which he created from his own mind. He would have proceeded to do very great things, especially with the money he could have."

Seneca shrugged.

They left the parking lot for the sidewalk that ran along the main road. There were people out, here and there. Still no sign of Bennett. At an intersection, as they waited for the red hand in the crossing box to turn into the little man who signaled safety, Juan looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Stop doing that."

The hand changed. Seneca stepped into the crosswalk. "Excuse me?"

Juan flew… Well, he walked in front of her, a bit clumsy under all his long limbs. He moved backwards so he could face her. Blocking her path. His hands were tight. "You insult me, to be so unkind to a child you have birthed this way. You insult my people. Have you the _slightest_ idea how many of the Fairies would wish to take your baby for their own? If you but knew how much I myself wanted a baby which was born to be mine, with the woman that I love, would you change then? How if it were possible for my magic to draw the child out of you, then in the beat of a wing, I would agree to nurture him inside me until his birth?"

"Surely you can have a baby of your own if you want one so badly," she said, examining her nails. A streak of paint had chipped off her thumb. She made a face.

"Alas!" When Juan stepped backwards onto the curb, he slapped his wrist across his forehead and squeezed his eyes tight. "I cannot indulge my selfish passions, for to do so would be to act against the greatest Fairy laws, which are sacred to our kind."

With a spin of his pen, he summoned a thick book with a dusky purple cover into his hands. Across the front, in golden script, were the words _El Rules._ The pages, edged in the same gold, shimmered like bars. Without looking down, Juan opened the book to its middle. Seneca leaned her head away. Tiny print swam before her eyes. She skimmed a bit of legalese along the lines of _Section P Subsection X_ before her mind glazed over.

"It's against your laws for a fairy to have a baby?" she managed to piece together. It didn't say that in the book anywhere she could see, but Juan seemed to believe it did, so she went with it. "Hm. It doesn't seem right to let a little law stop you, if you really want a baby. I wouldn't. I didn't. It's your life. Tell your own story. If you're short on cash, I suppose I could let you borrow some at a fair interest rate."

Juan glared at her. The red hand had returned, so Seneca walked past him along the sidewalk; she'd cross at the next light. He snapped the book shut. It disappeared into a cloud of dust. In a silent battle of wills, both of them resisted the urge to cough. "There are the rules," he insisted. "I am not one who makes a habit to break the rules."

"I suppose you won't be getting your baby then." Seneca went back to her nails.

The fairy sighed. He took his pen from his pocket again, and as he walked beside her, he held it between the forefingers on each hand. "I have decided. I intend to watch your new son grow, no matter what else Jorgen or the Amity program assign me to. No other fairy knows your family as well as I do. The baby does not deserve the same fate as his precious brother. I shall ensure my old mistakes are not repeated. There shall be no wishes granted for children who draw only pictures and do not speak the thoughts of their heart."

Seneca switched to her other hand. The polish on these nails was better. She should get them trimmed anyway. It was getting irritating to hit the typewriter keys. "Can you do that? It sounded to me that you were just fired. Or placed on probation, or however your thing works."

Juan's fingers tightened around the pen in his hand. _"That_ does not matter. I shall read El Rules from one cover to the other and back again. If you devote years to study, there are ways the right things can be done without having to break any of the rules. Which is very good for the sake of your life."

"Excuse me? My life?"

Juan continued to stare straight ahead. They were coming up on another intersection, a bit busier than the last one, that they would want to cross in both directions. "You," he said, "disgust me. To not mourn the child that you lost. You disgust me because I know you will not change in how you treat the second child of yours. Especially once your memories of this have been taken away. You disgust me because I cannot stop you. Our rules prevent me. I cannot fight for an unborn child. It will take me time to study El Rules and solve this problem on my own."

"I suppose we're even." Seneca flicked her hair behind her shoulders. "All this time, you were living in my house with magic at your fingertips. And you didn't even ask how I was doing, or if I'd appreciate so much as a glass of water. You somehow found the sanity to drain two years of your life alongside _him_. You know, just because Liam was a needy baby, it doesn't mean that I didn't need anything."

They had reached the intersection, but just as Seneca was about to step off the curb, the white man in the crossing box disappeared. In its place floated a smoldering star. Cars screeched on sudden brakes. She stumbled back. The intersection had ground to a standstill. Puzzled horns blared. When Seneca looked up, she saw that every stoplight had flared bright purple.

"That," said Juan, his teeth embedded in his words, "is not my job. I am the advocate of children who cannot stand up for themselves. You are a woman who already has all that she could want."

Seneca turned her head. Juan simmered beside her, his lower lip curled.

"How _dare_ you?" she asked. It took only one movement, quick movement, to press her fingertips against his throat. He was warm beneath her hand. Warm as iron, warm as stoves. "I crave love more than anything in the universe. And you are a man who wants a child. Perhaps we could make an arrangement."

 _"¿Qué?"_ Juan went cross-eyed. It lasted for a single second, but one second was all she needed. Seneca flung her arms around his neck. Her lips went to his. A spark. They only connected for an instant, because Juan was so much faster. He caught her shoulders and shoved her off. She may have fallen to the ground, if he hadn't maintained a handcuff grip on both her wrists. Horns continued to blare behind them. If what Juan had said about his natural magic affecting the world around him without him requiring a magic wand, she could only imagine what troubles were ravaging the intersection now.

"Oh, don't fight it." Seneca couldn't help but laugh at the stunned expression smeared across his face. "I'm a seductive woman, you're a sexy man. We have five months to get to know each other. Why not loosen up and see where things go?" She pinched the bit of bicep bulging beneath the tear in one sleeve. "You wouldn't really let them wipe my mind, would you, honey?"

Juan's glower sent the stoplights sparking, from the way the cars stopped and started behind her. Their changing colors reflected in his eyes. _"¡Ay, caramba!_ I ask, are you in your proper frame of mind, Señora? I already said to you, I am deeply in love with another woman. When a fairy falls in love, he loves his love forever. And even if I were not so in love with _mi amor_ Wanda, never would I in five hundred thousand years consider an affair with you!" Then he really did shove her back. Seneca's heel hit the edge of the curb. She caught herself by grabbing the pole with the crossing button that never worked. Juan bore down on her. Sizzling eyes, violet eyes. Chest puffed like a peacock. "Such an insult, I will not stand for. I do not hold a place in my heart of hearts, which is the greatest of my many fine muscles, for a woman who tells herself she will not love her own children."

The cars rolled along on their ways behind her. Sometimes they beeped. Even so, Seneca did not flinch. She curled her nails into the palms of her hands.

"What is the point of this anyway? You watching over my baby, crying over how unhappy he'll be - unhappy enough to need a magical fairy to flit around sprinkling pixie dust and whisking away his problems - while you leave me here to suffer a marriage with a man who will hardly even touch me! What am I supposed to do? How can I regain my sanity after a decade spent with him? What about my needs? When do I get a godparent to rescue me?" Instead of stepping towards him, Seneca stepped away, just barely off the curb. She flung her arms to either side. "Do you have any idea what it's like to slide from one day to the next with every pore on your skin desiring to touch someone who doesn't love you back? And- and knowing you have no chance to win his passions? That no matter what you've given up for him or how good you try to be, you just have no chance at all? Am I expected to be okay with that?"

Juan looked down at the pen lying in his hands. He rubbed his thumb along its yellow star cap. With a sigh, he gave it a single twist. Twisted it back. His coat tails fluttered. He bent his head. "Ah. Love is tricky material, even for a fairy to understand. If… if the gorgeous woman who stole my heart appeared here at my side and threw herself into my fabulously chiseled arms, then I wonder if I would love her no longer. I expect to crave the thought of kissing her forever, but I shall never overstep my place. For if my actions caused her to leave the husband she chose with her willing soul, then I should never be able to live with myself again. I love her and I want her, but I do not wish her unhappiness. And she is happy now."

His fingers went into his hair, his shoulder to the pole that bore the crossing signs. Her pole. Their pole. He laughed in a choke. "I love my spitfire Wanda! Her decision to marry the great warrior Cosmo I respect a thousand times, even when every part of me is bleeding on the ground. I love her and cannot deny it. I love her more than metaphors can say. I love her, and never shall I love another woman again." Fingers turned to fists. Spluttered laugh again, arm across the eyes. "Even if it means I never bear a child of my own. Pah! I crave the love of no woman but my Wanda. In my cowardly weakness, I care for her too much to draw myself away from her for good. I must dance with her again, even if for but one night."

"We're _married!"_ It was summer. Trucks with windows rolled down. Busy road. Stopped lights. Seneca stood there and screamed at him anyway, regardless of her status, uncaring of her tears. "Bennett swore he wanted me, and he expects me to keep on living like some- like some- _monk_. How is that fair?"

With each word she flung at him, Juan winced until he'd nearly shrunk back to his fairy size. His edges were flickering. Coat tails turning into wings. Slip away, fly away. Abandonment. He would not look at her. He raised his palms, leaving his pen to float in the air beside his cheek as though it dangled from an invisible string. "Señora, please-"

Seneca whirled on her heels. She marched straight across the crosswalk without bothering to look both ways, or check the lights. Cars shrieked at her. Seneca ignored them. Juan would protect her from a handful of cars. He was willing to use his magic for that. He cared about her life for the sake of the baby inside her. No reason further.

She could hear him chasing after her, his feet slapping the road in an awkward rhythm. "Señora-"

Not much farther now. She just had to reach the train tracks. "It's really unfair," she said over her shoulder. "To think. Of all fairy godfathers, I end up with the one who would actually refuse me. I could be your Wanda person someday. I could be your Wanda by tomorrow. You could whisk me away from this dreary city and into a magical world. Just the two of us. Wouldn't your magic let you do that?"

"I cannot," he said, putting his hands out to either side, as though this were a thought he had toyed with and talked himself out of a million and one times before. "It is a pointless endeavor, for you would not be Wanda. I would not be Bennett. It is madness to woo the heart of a woman unless guided by the fiery passions of love! … Aside from that, a human and a fairy? Pah! It could never be. It is against El Rules."

Seneca mulled over her thoughts, saying nothing more until, at last, she stepped through the front gates of the Buxaplenty mansion.

"I think your rulebook is stupid. And you're an idiot if you let it stand between you and your happiness."

Juan gasped, his fingers flying to his mouth. _"Exclamación de sorpresa!_ Do not insult the power and authority contained within the crisp and loving pages of El Rules! For without rules to hold our society together, it is inevitable that Fairies should return to the olden days when magic was but a chaotic plaything of tricksters and cruelty. This cannot be permitted."

Seneca tossed her hair behind one shoulder as she walked up the pathway. "You're a fairy. Magic should be your master, not the judicial system. Since when did some all-powerful creature ever let himself be subject to a few petty laws? I'm certain you could off your boss with a flick of your hand; he didn't look too bright."

"But El Rules are what make us a peaceful people of love and order. Most especially, love." Juan summoned the rule book into his hands with another cloud of dust. This, he thrust against Seneca's face. "This book is a precious guide to all that a Fairy must hold dear in his life. It is our code of honor."

"Yawn." She reached underneath his arms for the door handle. "You may as well trade in your Spanish flair for a French maid's outfit, because it sounds to me like you're the biggest lapdog for these hoity-toity rules of yours there has ever been."

 _Poof!_ The heavy book disappeared. Juan shoved his fingers in his ears, squeezing his eyes to crinkles. "Stop this! Your mockery stings with the fury of a thousand ants! You do not understand the majesty of the Fairy Council. Without El Rules, we are chaos. Without El Rules, we are nothing."

Seneca rolled her eyes. "I see. It's because of your beloved rules that you let Liam die on a cold examination table, isn't it? Not because you didn't have the power to save him. You just didn't want to break your adorable little laws."

"Stop it, I say!" Strangled voice, glowing tears. Sunlight tears, shadow tears. "This is untrue! I am no _bruja!_ I am no _luz mala!_ I am no dishonest reaper of traveling souls. We have come beyond the olden days of Fairykind. I shall never be what my _papá_ is!"

"I'm a writer, Einstein. I call them like I see them. And what I _don't_ see is why you feel you deserve to call yourself 'good' if you're willing to let a good little boy die." Seneca reached for the doorbell, but the button turned to applesauce beneath her finger. She wrenched back her hand. When she spun around, Juan had popped into his undersized (yet muscular) fairy form once again. The fairy hovered above the Buxaplenty logo engraved in the porch, arm outstretched. Whisks of wind twirled around him. He aimed his pen between her eyes, and it wasn't a pen at all, but a magic wand that crackled with power stolen from the stars.

"Señora Seneca Cajallena. You are a Buxaplenty, with the riches from generations of two wealthy families under your command. Ought I to scold you for letting one child in this country to go hungry for a night? With all of my fabulously near-infinite powers, should I hold you accountable and punish you for every time across the past two years alone that I have known you to walk by a struggling family in need? All the times you chose to look the other way when a man blind or homeless crossed your path? Each day that you mocked those who would join your writing groups, for while they had the skills to critique your pieces, you looked down upon them for the middle-class backgrounds they came from?"

The cyclone whipping around him nearly tore the lashes from her eyelids. Seneca inhaled. She slipped one of her feet behind the other, squirming her toes into the ground. Her palms pressed against the door behind her. Solid door, stable door.

"… No."

"Then consider what you can do to help this human world, and leave your concerns regarding all things Fairy in my sexy manicured hands. You are only human. I am merely fae. I perform magic, not miracles."

The wind died away as his voice trailed off at the end. Juan's eyes (Cotton eyes, flower eyes) softened in their centers. His long wings fluttered like whispering paper cranes. Floating forward on his stomach, he reached out to touch his hand below her chin.

 _"Oye…_ I can be your closest secret friend these few months we must share as I am on probation, Señora, or I can be your most _loco_ enemy. I can weep passionate tears with you, read and reread so many stories with you, and tell you all the wonders of Fairy magic that I know." His fingers slipped away. "But I cannot love you, for I despise the lines you have allowed yourself to cross. I suggest you do not test what remains of my limited patience. Then I shall have no reason to seek vengeance upon you once your memories are gone."

"Is it me?" she mumbled to the ground.

 _"¿Qué?"_

"Never mind." Seneca tried to turn, only for Juan to grab her shoulder. She flinched at his hot fingers. Sausage fingers. And those tender (if distrusting) eyes. He had eyes. She relented, slumping against the doors. "I'm just not pretty enough for Bennett."

Juan made a teetering motion with his hand, his star-tipped wand pinned between two fingers. "You are, how do you say, in many ways not good enough for Bennett."

Wasn't teasing, stung so hard. Might have teased, but far too late. Seneca bent her head until her chin touched her necklace. "I don't understand what more I could have done. I did everything right, as best as I could… I wish-"

"Ah ah ah." Juan pressed his forefinger into her lips. He lifted his wand with the other hand. The star glowed like a lightning bug. "No wishes for you, _mi cariño_. You are an adult. And as adults do, you must face your problems, how do you say, in the face with your face? Yes. Your husband will be eating his supper now. Seafood. I shall go home to begin my paperwork, and return to you tomorrow. It is as though I am a wave which has never washed upon this shore at all. I'll call you."

After flexing his muscles once, he disappeared in a swirl of purple dust. Seneca coughed, three times. When she raised her head again, there was no sign that the Spanish-speaking fairy had ever been. Only a few tiny glints of glitter sparkled on her white shoes.

Well. Well then. There wasn't much left to do now but… head inside.

Red tiles, creaking chandelier. Cutting through the sitting room across thick carpet and a hairy rug. One hundred eighty-nine rooms in the Buxaplenty mansion, with more being added every year. Dining room, dining room… Where was it, again? May as well take a smoke first…

No. No, that could wait. Seneca had found what she was looking for. She leaned her hand against the curve of the archway to the dining room, where Bennett ate alone at the glass table. Across him lay an empty spot, with food prepared but the plate untouched. He ate neatly, for a dragon. Fish had always been his greatest weakness. Butter most of all. Today it was broiled oysters, imported bluefin tuna, turtle soup, and grilled eels.

Seneca stepped beside his chair. She waited. After thirty seconds accented with nothing but dignified chewing and swallowing noises, Bennett looked up.

"Mm. Darling. So you made it back after all. I noticed a speck of rust on the hood of the convertible and it looked as though it were threatening rain, so I decided to drive home without you. No hard feelings, I presume."

He did not ask about Liam. Not about the vet clinic. Not the police. Not Juan. And definitely not Liam. Not her good boy Liam. His eyes lingered on hers for only half the time he'd spoken, before dropping back to the eel on his plate. Smudged plate, imperfect plate, better-than-she-was plate. Seneca clenched her hands into fists.

"I changed my mind, Bennett. I want to keep it."

"The convertible?" His fork wandered over to a piece of lobster. "I thought you wanted to sell it."

"No, we can still sell the car."

"Mm." Lobster near his mouth, hovering still. "The dress, then? I happen to like that one on you."

"The baby. I don't want to put him up for adoption."

Bennett glanced up and blinked. Startled blink, hopeful blink. "You want to keep the _baby?_ "

"As a matter of fact, I do." Seneca patted her hand against her stomach. "Remington would be a sweet name, with far more power behind it than Indigo. No. Perhaps Rembrandt, after the great magician painter of the Netherlands. Yes, he must be named after an artist. Rembrandt Buxaplenty. Our little Remy."

 _"Your_ little Remy." Absent-minded.

"Excuse me?"

Bennett swallowed his bit of lobster and reached with his fork towards another. "He isn't mine. We both know that. After everything I've ever done for you, to think that you went behind my back this way."

On this point, Seneca would hold her ground. She took one step sideways, scratching her heels across the tile. "It wasn't entirely behind your back. You knew Oliver was over. For money's sake, we threw a party that day. We had guests."

"Mm, yes… Family guests." His voice curdled into the beginnings of a sneer. Eel instead of lobster this time, on the fork. Glinting fork. "And you snuck off to lay with one of them. That's twice you've betrayed my faith in you now. Agreeing to host that party must have been your plan all along, just to guilt a little more money out of me, just to threaten blackmail-"

"Maybe Remy would be yours if you had ever paid a lick of attention to my feelings in the last decade." Her hands clenched the front of her chest. "What do you want from me, Bennett? To content myself to the life of some celibate mountain monk? To starve me when there are fairies out there begging for a child just as much as I have? You know I wanted one! You know I wanted _yours!_ That's why I married you!"

His gaze fell to his food.

"You are my husband. I can't live like this forever, starved of attention and unloved beyond belief. It's cruel and abusive!"

He tilted his head at that poisoned word, _cruel_. Stood up. As Seneca fumbled with her hands, Bennett took hold of her shoulders and kissed her, gently, with his lips. He tasted just like eel. Seneca didn't close her eyes, so she knew that Bennett didn't either. It was hardly even her lips that he kissed. Mostly he got her teeth. They were clenched, her heaving breaths shaking her body. Her crying wasn't very ladylike.

Bennett pulled back. Three cold fingers trailed up her cheek to her eye. He pressed in his thumb to push one tear away. "Mm, yes. I suppose the local gossip has gotten rather out of hand as of late, hasn't it? Eee… We'll do what Buxaplentys always do when under the scorn of accusing eyes. We'll pretend. Tell the world that I'm the father, and from here until death do us part, I'll give you any night you ask, darling."

"What?" she croaked. Frozen heart, thawing heart, thumping heart. "You don't mean that. You don't love me enough."

"I can pretend." Bennett took her ears between his palms and bent her head forward. This time, he kissed the highest point of her nose. Slow kiss, promise kiss. "We won't tell Oliver. We won't tell anyone- even DNA tests won't be able to tell my brother and I apart. Mm… This Liam will be our heir. Once he's born, swear to him I'm his daddy, even if he begs to know the truth. Don't ever let on otherwise. I don't want it getting out that he isn't mine. People would talk, and I so hate keeping up pretenses."

"… Remy. My son - Our son - His name is Remy. He's a good boy, Remy."

"Remy." He released her shoulders, and picked up his plate. One quick movement, stabbing movement, and he'd scooped up another strip of meat on his fork. This, Bennett held to her mouth. "Oh, yes. Care for a bite of bluefin tuna, my darling? Ah, do try the turtle soup before you go. It's delightful."


	47. (17) Shadow

_Summary:_ A day in the life of Foop's alternate personality: Carl Poofypants High School tales.

 _Characters:_ Hiccup, Foop (Mentioned), Anti-Wanda, Goldie, Finley (Mentioned), Sammy (Mentioned), assorted fairies, assorted anti-fairies

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Frozen" / "Repeat"

 _Prerequisites:_ "Evolution Hopeful", "Mature"

* * *

 **17\. Shadow** (Post-series, Carl Poofypants High)

 _Year of Soil; Spring of the Sliding Muck_

* * *

I completed drawing the last little gray flower in an entire field of flowers, and then doodled a happy little vortex among my pretty mathematical equations and interesting vocabulary terms. It was such a lovely little place. Even the flowers smiled up at me. I smiled behind my knuckles, and etched out a few squirrels beside them. Not bunnies. They would eat my flowers.

When Dm. Starchant came by, she slid one paper in front of me face down, and the most recent Advanced Wand Trajectory exam I'd taken on top of my notebook face up. The tip of my Everleady slipped off the squirrel's spiraled tail. Five of the six questions on the first page were X'd out in pink pen. The sixth one had a note beside it that read, _You somehow used the wrong formula and got the correct answer._ Stapled to the top of the whole thing was a pale blue note card that read, _See me after class, Hiccup._

I scanned the note and looked up, but Dm. Starchant had already floated further, passing more exams out to the other four students sitting in the front row with me. Oh dear. I pried the note away from the glowing staple, folded it into a square, and tucked it away in my back pocket. Such a pity. I'd wanted to get to Recent History class early so I could pick out a nice place in the top row where I knew I could stare down at the back of Flickertwist's cute head. Ah, well. Such is life. The decision wasn't mine.

While the Fairy students all around me started packing their things away so they could go to their next class, I flipped over the upside-down paper and held it beside my own. Foop and I were always given different test versions, and his were always easier. I looked between his plain white sheet and the pink marks all over mine. He didn't even get one question wrong.

I tensed my shoulders briefly, then let them release as I stretched my arms. Before Dm. Starchant could turn her crystal ball projection off for the morning, I scribbled down two final notes about Foop's upcoming due dates, then snapped my notebook shut with one hand. The Fairies around me raised their wings and took to the air in a low, audible hum. I drummed my claws against the tabletop, resisting the absent-minded urge to knock on it. I'd gotten smart about that. My nervous habit was tapping on things with the backs of my knuckles, you see, but when you're an Anti-Fairy, you learn your limits pretty quick.

Once all the other students had exited the room, I slung my backpack over one shoulder and approached Dm. Starchant's desk with my fingers laced together at my waist. I dipped my head. "You wanted to see me, dame?"

Dm. Starchant set the last few papers down and turned back to me, mimicking my folded hand gesture. "Hello, Hiccup, and thanks. I just wanted to check in and touch base. We don't get to talk much outside of hex messages anymore."

"You don't need to raise your voice when you talk to me, dame. I speak fluent Snobbish. Anti-Fairies only speak Vatajasa _kokeikan_." A word that translated roughly to "ceremonially," "non-publicly," or "only in a safe environment where your people won't try to take it away from us." Not that I defined it for her. She was an honored professor. She could figure it out.

My request seemed to catch Dm. Starchant off guard, because she rushed to explain herself: "Foop asked me specifically to speak up when I talk to him."

… Huh. That was odd. Maybe he was sitting in the back of the room that day. I pursed my lips and said nothing.

"How are you doing?" Dm. Starchant leaned one hand on her desk, studying my face. "Is the class moving along too quickly for you?"

"No, I don't think it's too much too fast. I just struggle with math, but I think everyone does."

Her face said, _Not this much._ She shifted her wings. They rustled. "Do you want to stick with the Advanced class for the rest of the zodiac cycle? It's not too late to transfer out."

"I like it. You're a good teacher. I like the way you use your wand to draw dashed lines on the digiboard. And I like your field trips."

"Well. I'm glad. Just let me know if you would like some additional help. I can recommend some excellent tutors."

I paused. Okay, um… I flexed my fingers, forcing myself to bite back the immediate answer that came to mind and think the phrasing of her question over. Dm. Starchant was being forward, but not rude. Not really. She meant well and was only trying to help. I brought my hands together in front of my chest.

"Ah, you see, that really isn't necessary, Dm. Starchant. Foop has been a tutor in the advanced classes for decades. He'll help me."

This time, she was the one who paused. She dropped her gaze briefly, then flicked it back up to me. "I've noticed the scores you get on your exams don't reflect the grades on your homework assignments. I just worry that you're going to need to be dropped to the regular class if you can't keep your grades up."

"You can be forward about that thing you're trying to say," I said, bracing myself for the storm. "I know indirect communication doesn't come naturally to Fairies. Just be straight with me." Even though I was never straight with anyone else. That's a pride joke, hee hee.

Her lips twitched. "I think Foop's been doing your homework for you. Either that, or you've taken the initiative to copy off his answers."

I tilted my head. "I have other things to do besides work for your class. I don't get to front in the body very much, and I don't like wasting my time on this. Sharing is faster."

"You Anti-Fairies may have no qualms about cheating, but that's not how we do things in Fairy society."

"Collaboration," I corrected. "It's not really cheating. I contribute my strengths, and Foop contributes his. We make an excellent team."

Dm. Starchant folded her arms. "At Carl Poofypants High, we don't give out gold stars for 'teamwork.' The end of the term is just around the corner, and I cannot in good conscience award you a grade you didn't earn. If you want five stars for this class on your transcript, I can reassign you new story problems. You'll have to visit me during my office hours every day so I can ensure it's actually you who completes them, but if you start now and work hard and honestly, you'll be able to pull five stars before I put in the final grade."

Ouch. I squinted at her directness, then shrugged it off and pushed my smile back into place. My fingers wrapped around the straps of my backpack, the heavy textbooks inside making them dig into my shoulders. "No thanks. I'll just take the grade you think I deserve. I'm just in school because it's fun and I like to learn, but it doesn't bother me if I get a bad score. But, ah, please just don't punish Foop because I cheated off him. He did everything right, and he deserves his stars."

"You're not concerned about how this might affect your future?" she asked.

I looked at her. "Um. I'm a prince. Foop and I are going to be High Count of the Anti-Fairies someday, even if we score zero stars in your class. So no, I actually don't care about this."

She raised her blue eyebrow. The rest of her hair was yellow, but her eyebrows were blue. "Do you know when, er… Foop will be back? I'd like to talk to him about this before you officially decide to reject my offer."

My tongue probed one of my fangs. "Ah, yes… About that. Um. Foop and I had a fight about the sweatshirt I picked up at the Mistleville Pride Festival." I tapped my pencil against the backs of my knuckles. "He's been hiding for three days. I don't think he wants to come out for a while."

Dm. Starchant lifted her shoulders. "Well. If you change your mind, I can extend my office hours for you. Tell Foop he did excellent on his exam, and that he shouldn't let his classmates underestimate him."

Underestimate him. Because we were Anti-Fairies. And Anti-Fairies weren't a people expected to get good grades. Of course. I bobbed my head in farewell and skimmed off for the next class. On the way, I shoved my marked-up test down the hallway recycling tube (sponsored by Rocco's Recycling! I will seek my revenge on them all one day :)) before anyone else could see it. Briefly, I pressed my palm to my eye and let my smile slip. "Mercy me. And it's not even noon yet. I cry."

Well.

We almost never got bullied at school. Not by rough-and-tough Fairy kids with huge fists and cramped lockers, I mean. Taunts and jeers, yes, sometimes we had to take those. Or I did. On most days, Foop ruled the classrooms, but I always seized control away from him when he started packing up. I knew where we needed to go and I knew how not to let their scathing insults break my spirit. High school kids could be cruel, and Foop didn't need to hear what they said about him when the teachers weren't around to watch.

It wasn't usually so bad, but today was worse. I wasn't even doing anything to incite them, just visiting my locker and wishing I had a mirror in there that I could break for a laugh, when I felt a sudden _smack!_ sting my bottom end. My wings jolted out. I hissed through my teeth. Maintaining my cool for one moment more, I drew my books from my locker shelf and turned around.

Aha. Should've guessed it. The ringleader of the trio was freckled, though not much. His name was Boulder. At least, that was his nickname. The two leaner drakes bobbing in the air behind him must be his drones, or something. Poof and Fin called them "the pebbles" because of who they hung around with. A couple of mallard ducks, literally only two instead of a regular-sized batch, pecked around Boulder's feet. Weird. I thought Finley was the only dominant gyne registered for morning classes on this end of campus.

The blue-haired fairy with the freckles grinned at me. "Aww, no smile, sunshine? Don't pretend you didn't want that. You would've dodged away in time if you didn't want it."

Rolling my eyes, I shut my locker with my shoulder and clutched my books to my chest. "Anti-Fairy drakes can't detect auras in the energy field like Fairies can. You have powerful smell and tasting senses, Anti-Fairies have sharp ears to hear magic with, and Fairy Refracts have scrying eyes. You must be very dumb if you still don't get that by this age."

Boulder put out his tongue, all pink and coated with soft bristles, not long and blue like an Anti-Fairy's. With the pebbles crowding on one side of me and Boulder's arm blocking my direct escape the other way, he kept me semi-effectively pinned to the lockers. Unless I, y'know, chose to _hiccup_ to his other side, fly off, or literally take any other method of escape. He shrugged. "Hey, you were asking for it, bluebell. I could see your tail bulging beneath that flotation device of a seat cushion you have from all the way down the hall. If you didn't want that, you would've heard me and gotten out of the way."

"Ah, while individuals do project a unique blend of sounds related to their subspecies, energy level, and gender identity into the energy field, an Anti-Fairy like me can only sort out individual tones or directions when there aren't quite this many people around. The energy field is a communal structure that relays to me the general mood overlying the entire room. Or corridor, in this instance." I flicked my ears for emphasis. "I would be very happy to explain the specifics if you care to skim with me on my way to Recent History class."

Boulder studied me for a moment, then dropped his arm. When I floated past, he and his pebbles tailed me down the hall. The ducks tailed them. "I heard you like Seelie drakes," he said abruptly.

Had since this body was barely out of puppyhood, as a matter of fact. Someone was certainly on top of things. "I'm actually exclosexual. I like Seelie and Unseelie Courters regardless of their gender identity."

The pebbles giggled and whispered, shoving him forward from behind. Boulder grinned and flew a little in front of me. He spread his arms to block a segment of my path. "Well? If you like Seelie drakes, kiss me, then."

I ducked his arm and kept floating on. In fact, I kicked up my heels. "Uh-huh. Ah, my saliva is comprised of the same chemicals that make up battery acid, you see. My gums and tongue neutralize the effects, but if it got on your skin and you didn't wipe it away in a few seconds, it would burn you up very terribly. I think that if I had to, I could be _very_ effective at kissing a lot of your skin and leaving it that way."

"Mother Nature didn't intend for Seelie and Unseelie to pair up. That's why she made our reproductive systems different."

I dropped my books on the floor. Spinning around, I clapped my hands to my cheeks. "Oh, golly gee, you're right! People with different reproductive systems can't be together! Oh wow, my word- Someone tell the straights that heterosexuality is cancelled, effective immediately!"

Boulder crossed his arms as I gathered up my books again. "Ha ha. I'm serious, though. Kissing across Court boundaries is illegal for a reason. It's wrong. What argument for it do you have besides, 'It just feels good?' It's Anti-Fairies like you that go around stabbing people to death and saying you just do it because 'It feels good.' When Mother Nature created us, she made it clear that we're not supposed to murder, and that we're not supposed to have cross-Court relations either. So? How can you argue that one of those is okay and still agree that the other isn't?"

Picking up my books gave me a second or two to think. I wanted to tell him that not all Anti-Fairies attacked Fairies with anything more extreme than a bit of bad luck, especially because when a Fairy dies, then an Anti-Fairy dies as a result, and that helps no one. But I knew there were surely cases in the past of Anti-Fairies killing Fairies, and I wasn't familiar enough with history and politics to risk engaging in that argument with him. Instead, I stood and said, "Ah, to be honest, if I'm close enough to a Seelie Courter to stab him with a knife, I will probably be doing something that does _not_ involve stabbing him with a knife, if you know what I mean." I looked Boulder dead in the eye and shrugged, tight-lipped. Whatcha gonna do?

"Tough talk from a needle-neck," he sneered. "How do you even know you like us, let alone drakes versus damsels? You're too young to have experience, even for an Anti-Fairy. Ever canoodled with a Seelie Courter?"

Hmm. Interesting question. You know, I never understood why people claimed our two races couldn't find a way for our bodies to be physically intimate. It seems logical enough to me. Maybe _Fairies_ couldn't comprehend it since their parts are different, but I think it could work if an Anti-Fairy took the lead. I really think it could. I've watched thousands of bat courtship videos over the years when I get bored while cooking supper. I've even moved up to watching videos with actual Anti-Fairies in them (I use earbuds now, since Poof and Sammy get super embarrassed for some reason when they hear the squeaking?) And I've seen what happens between people during the seven festivals, or over migration season, or when couples honey-lock. So I understand the general idea. You kind of do that little thing they do. Yes, I think if you took away the part where you hang upside-down, it would work with a Fairy. Maybe not everyone is willing to try, but I can be _very_ resourceful.

We'd continued walking. With Boulder huffing down my neck, I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. "Ah, I haven't canoodled in the most extreme sense, I must confess. I'm waiting for a very special someone to get his adult wings first. At least I know I _can_ find a willing partner when the time is right." I paused, then twisted to peer over my shoulder at him and innocently asked, "Have _you_ ever canoodled with a Seelie Courter?"

If he hadn't been a gyne with a ridiculously low amount of pale freckles on his face, that retort may not have been quite so effective. But I knew people. The pebbles "Ooooh snap!"ped as Boulder stuttered and mumbled. I suddenly had my doubts that they were drones at all. Boulder didn't seem dominant enough to attract them. He probably paid kabouters to follow him around and make him look more dominant than he actually was.

"Cross-Court kisser!" he finally hollered, fuming where he floated.

"And loving it," I shouted back. Just to irritate him further, I swayed my hips as I went. I wondered how much Foop knew about what was going on here in the hallway right now. I hadn't let him into the co-pilot's seat this morning, so he wasn't supposed to hear or see anything inside there. Maybe he could detect my mood, like I sometimes could detect his stress or excitement when he was fronting. Maybe he was curled up somewhere on the floor of our mindspace, covering his eyes or hugging his knees. He needed that sometimes. Sometimes when he got too stressed, he needed a safe place to relax, and the safest place for him to go was inside the mind, huddled on the imaginary couch in his imaginary pajamas with imaginary notebooks and imaginary Skullbeary, while I calmly managed our self-care and life responsibilities up top.

I crossed the school building to Recent History class just before the bell could declare me late. Half the class raised their heads as I came in. Even after all these years, my signals in the energy field probably stabbed cold chills through their consciousness and threw most of them off their groove. I saw a few of them shake their heads as though to rid themselves of some unpleasant intrusive thought. The more dominant folks scooted their chairs back from the connected row of tables, stretching their arms above their heads and taking up space, while those who tended towards submissiveness unconsciously pulled their seats forward and drew in their limbs. A few chairs were still available at the top of the slanted room. Perfect! I started for the one on the far left. I could see all the cuties in the class from up there. Especially Flickertwist. Maybe I just liked everyone's attention on me as I crossed all the way from the door.

Goldie sat alone up there, the seats empty all around her. She saw me coming and pressed in her wings so I could slide by. "Hey," she said. "Don't tell me who's out." For a moment she held her hands folded together in front of her face, then asked, "Hiccup?"

I pulled up my sweatshirt sleeve so she could see the purple bracelet with the moon charm around my wrist. "Ooh, you nailed it today!"

She pumped her arm. "Nice. I'm getting good at this. Glad you made it."

"Yeah." I dropped my backpack on the floor. "Sorry I couldn't catch you at your locker. I was late. Just dealing with microaggressions in Starchant's."

"I'm sure she was just trying to help ya, sugar."

"Oh, yes." I sat on one side of my chair and started fidgeting with my bracelet. I didn't always like making a big deal about when I was out front, because I worried that anyone who might stop themselves from bullying me would bully Foop the moment they knew I wasn't around, but Foop liked me to keep my identification bracelet exposed so he could blame me appropriately if he came back and didn't like what he heard about what I did. We had more than one bracelet, actually. Foop's had a blue star charm. The one of us who was fronting was supposed to always keep their bracelet the farthest down their arm at the wrist. It helped the people around us who actually cared, like Goldie, figure out who was in control of our body without making it awkward. Pinching my tongue between my fangs, I tried to cram my thick sleeve underneath the metal chains. It didn't want to go.

Drk. Weaver hovered at the front of the class with his crystal ball in hand, the thing presumably set to reel his usual opening cinematic. He liked to make a show of it so we could see the calendar scroll across hundreds of thousands of years before settling around our general lifetimes. Drk. Weaver was mint, mostly, and I liked him well enough. He always celebrated the birthday of every person in the class. Even me.

Well, Foop, anyway. Foop had been born on June 13th. We Anti-Fairies celebrated a different holiday on the 13th every single month it didn't fall on a Friday. June 13th was the day of Spring Cleaning, when Anti-Fairies from across the cloudlands helped clean out one of our beautiful Zodiac Temples, or at least tour the insides and learn about what our acolytes actually did. It wasn't a holiday that even registered on the radar of most Fairies, but even if he wouldn't admit it, I think Foop still enjoyed sharing his experiences with Spring Cleaning celebrations with the class every few years. He liked being able to show off and talk up something our classmates didn't know. Bragging is in our shared nature, you see.

As the opening cinematic began to wind down, rapidly approaching the Fifty Years of the Frozen Planet, Drk. Weaver said, "Today we're going to talk about the six humans who invaded Fairy World using technology instead of magic. In fact, many of you should remember your first time living in the Spellementary dorms, and may recall-"

"Everyone knows this story," groaned some rich kid leprechaun in the front row.

Drk. Weaver frowned. "All right. That information will be on your final exam, but if you already know it all anyway, I'll skip a few thousand years ahead in the timeline." He did, to the simultaneous cheers and groans of the rest of the class. Goldie nudged my arm with a playful smile, probably expecting something exciting to come up. But I froze when I saw what year the calendar cinematic landed on. The Winter of the White Sparrow. Drk. Weaver's eyes scanned my row. "Now then. Who can tell me about the Cavatina Project?"

Silence. Everyone in the room simultaneously looked at me while also making the attempt to look away. I printed the words _Cavatina Project_ along the top of my fresh notebook page. My Everleady almost broke.

"If no one remembers the Cavatina Project, then we'll have to start a bit further back."

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Each month he scooted back passed with painful slowness. My lips clenched. No one said a word.

"Foop. You've been awfully quiet back there. Why don't you tell us about black-eggs?"

I stared at the page in my notebook for another second, then raised my eyes. "Ah. Well, yes." I pushed my fingertips up the table that ran across our row, keeping my clawtips high to avoid leaving scratches along the wood. "Is that hyphenated or not, sir?"

"Don't dodge the question, Foop."

"Sometimes the meanings of things change when words are hyphenated," I muttered. "And considering what our lesson almost was today, I'd think you would know that." I picked at the end of my sleeve. "Ah. So. If an expecting Fairy father consumes significant amounts of sugar during his pregnancy, the eggs in the egg nest inside his forehead chamber gradually start to turn gray. If he consumes too much sugar, his eggs will turn black and die."

No one would look at me. Not even Goldie, busy playing with her glittery fingernails. I dropped my gaze, clenching my fingers around my pen.

"And, ah, things are a little bit different for members of the Unseelie Court. Our eggs don't… can't… die. Not unless the eggs die for our hosting counterpart too. So, if a pregnant Anti-Fairy consumes too much sugar, and their eggs turn black, the baby Anti-Fairy will still be born. Some people also call this condition _fetal sugar syndrome_. A black-egg, hyphenated noun, is an Anti-Fairy who is born from one of those eggs that should be dead, but can't die. Black-eggs aren't…" I blinked. Twice. "They, um, were never alive. They're born dead, but because they can't die if their hosting counterpart lives, they, um… They just exist. They can try to live, but they're very sick. They can't keep down any of the food they eat. They can't sleep. They're starving, tired, and in constant pain every day until they die. That's, ah, that's what black-eggs are. That's it. That's all I know."

"And what is it called when a defenseless nymph is stolen from his parents, threatened with sharp metal instruments, and deprived of a safe place to rest and recuperate?"

I wrote a few sentences in my notebook, then looked up when I realized how silent the classroom was. Drk. Weaver was still staring at me. Huh? I looked at Goldie, then back at him. "Um. I… I don't know, sir."

"Just make a guess."

"Gross misuse of your alternate personality's pottery tools?"

Drk. Weaver's lip curled. "Apparently, it's called the 'Anti-Fairies will be Anti-Fairies' loophole. Now, what is it called when the heir to the High Count seat gets away completely unpunished for the crimes they commit towards an innocent Seelie Courter?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Foop." Drk. Weaver pointed his sizzling wand at the digiboard. The crystal ball projection flickered. "As I understand it, you meet with Cavatina's parents every time a Council meeting comes around."

I blinked. "Um. I guess so? But so does Goldie, sir, being the will o' the wisp ambassador in training…"

She winced beside me. Drk. Weaver didn't pause at all.

"And what, pray tell, is the name of the law that prevents them from tearing you limb to limb for what you did to their son in the Winter of the White Sparrow?"

I glanced sideways, then back up again. "Drk. Weaver, I don't like to cause problems, but it seems to me there are quite a few capable minds in here who could also answer this question."

He tapped his wand against his palm. "I'll rephrase it. On paper, what is the reason you're allowed to attend this school instead of rotting in a prison cell with the rest of your crazy people right now?"

"Ahh…" I folded my hands in front of my chest. My toes curled in. "Drk. Weaver, as much as I really hate to say this, I'm afraid you are very mistaken in directing your anger towards me. Foop is always punished for his crimes. I would love to impart the specifics of the Cavatina Project upon you, but I'm afraid I wasn't fronting or even co-fronting in the body at that time. I know nothing. You'd want to ask Foop about that sort of thing. I'm only Hiccup."

"I believe a debate is in order before our final exam comes along. I would very much like to hear when you think your people will shape up and realize that it's morally wrong to attack innocent bystanders. Tell me: Why do you get away with torturing children without receiving more than a slap on the wrist in reply simply because you're a prince?"

"A slap on the wrist?" I repeated, my lips trembling.

"I haven't seen you punished as you deserve," he sniffed. His wings flickered and glinted.

"Ah, excuse me? Are you seriously implying that being in and out of Plane 23, the Pivotverse, prisons, asylums, and psych wards for 37 straight years is not an unethically traumatizing experience for a newborn?" Before I could stop me, I found myself on my feet. My wings flared. "Are you implying, _sir_ , that Foop _faked_ all the trauma he suffered during the Fifty Years of the Frozen Planet which led to my existence?"

Drk. Weaver's arms dropped. "You're really committed to this whole charade, aren't you? You legitimately think you're a different person when you pretend to be Hiccup. You're a textbook case for facetious disorder if ever I saw one."

 _"I am literally a textbook case for dissociative identity disorder!"_ I slammed my fist down on the table. Snowflakes and electric sparks exploded in all directions. "Fine! Maybe Foop doesn't technically take all the punishments he deserves, but that's because it's _my_ job to protect him and our body. I don't give a basilisk's rear if he hurts people! I don't care if you all think he's a bad person! He still didn't deserve everything he and I have been through together! He's my little brother, and I love him. It's not Foop's fault that I refuse to let him suffer. He's a part of me. I won't let him taste anything like the terrible trauma he had to go through as a pup ever again! It _destroyed_ him. It literally shattered his mind, and _this_ is how he copes with pain now. Your people did this to us! You could never understand. I'll _happily_ take any punishment you throw at us so I can protect him. Like I'm doing right now, and like I always will."

As I huffed and blinked at my tears, Drk. Weaver turned his back. Linking his hands behind him, he floated up and down along the front row. "Class, today we're going to discuss why the Orchid Code goes against the very concepts of safety and equality that the Delegating Administrative Rules of the Known Universe stand for."

Without blinking, I grabbed my notebook and my backpack, slammed my chair against the table, and stormed out of the room. Red poppies sprouted from the carpet wherever my tears fell. "Hiccup," Goldie called, rising to her wings. "Hey! Hey, wait up!"

Back in the comparative safety of the hall, I huffed and faced her, swinging my backpack in my hand. Not at her- just a bit around by my knees. I hadn't had the energy to yank the pack over my shoulders. "If you're trying to make me feel better, it won't even work."

"Hiccup," she pleaded, "don't let him get to you."

"I'm not going to sit there and take that!"

She tried a different tactic. "Won't y'all stay for me? We have study group tonight, and you always take the best notes."

"You take the best notes. You're not the one who switches in and out with another personality multiple times a day most days of the week."

Goldie bit her lip. A twirl of golden hair drifted in front of her face, and she tucked it behind her ear with all the rest. "Well, if y'all ain't sitting through that class, then I'm not either. I want Mr. Webber to know I stand with you, and not him or any a' those horrid things he said."

"He's a kabouter," I said, avoiding eye contact. I dug around in my sweatshirt pocket. "You're supposed to call him Drake instead of Mister. And his name's Weaver."

She shrugged. "Pah, that. Listen, if he can't bother to get your name right, why should I bother with his?" Her buttery wings filled a quarter of the hallway all on their own as she floated around to face me. "You wanna grab a li'l early grub? We'll get our notes from Sputter later."

My fingers clenched around the tiny crystal ball on mine and Foop's lanyard. I drew it from my pocket. "Ah, no offense, Goldie, but I just want to go out with my mum today. I need to be away from Seelie Courters right now."

"Oh." Goldie hovered for another few seconds, then pulled back. "See you later, then."

We parted. The halls were largely empty, and being a lone anti-fairy wandering about during class time surely made me incredibly conspicuous to the whole security system. I kept my hands out of my sweatshirt because of that, and away from the wands fitted in the sheaths on either hip, so everyone could see I wasn't secretly holding anything. Foop hadn't come out front for three days now, but it had seemed polite to bring his wand to school anyway. I liked it when he made the specific effort to bring mine even if he didn't expect me to pop out and use it, after all. He must like it too. At least he was left-handed and I was a northpaw, so that made it easier to carry both.

While I stroked my thumb along the surface of the keychain crystal, I pressed my hip against the button of a water fountain on the wall. By the time I took a sip, someone had connected their crystal to accept my scry. Thankfully, my mother. Nice to see that charm bracelet was working out for her. That was my idea, you see.

"Mum?" I wiped my dripping mouth with my sleeve. "It's Hiccup. Ah, can you come and take me out for lunch s-so I won't be tempted to hide in the lavatories while I eat?"

Her small face squinted up at me. She sat in her office in the Blue Castle, probably busy checking over reports translated into picture cues, but not too busy for me. "Huh. I coulda sworn your lunch break di'n't start 'til afternoon."

"Drk. Weaver let us out early today." I held the crystal ball on my right side so I knew she wouldn't see if my left hand reached up to rub my exhausted eyes. "Sammy, Poof, Fin, Goldie, and Skeeter are still in class, and Kelsia's working, so I can't eat with them. Would you care to join me?"

"I reckon I'd like a lunch date with my own son very much."

Mum always knew how to make me feel better. "Ohh," I said, almost laughing as it left me. My toes and fingers squeezed. "Great! Um… How about at Anti-D'Hielo's? Remember that one? Golly, we haven't been in years, and last time Smoky came with us. It's by that one place that serves steak, across from the Fairy Fro-Yo. I just… I really need some authentic Anti-Fairy culture today."

"I'll be there in a wandshake, lambchop. Jist let me try remembering where I put your daddy's quill." She looked around, her forehead creased. "Huh. Oooooooor… I guess there's no rule sayin' I _have_ ta leave him a note when I go out…"

"Ooh, but, isn't he still in jail because of how everyone thought we disrupted the Snobulac tribute ships and ignited their fury against Fairy World?"

"Nah. The Fairies finally realized he didn't do nothin' wrong, so they let him out." Mum looked under a coaster on the desk. "I'll tell him I'm gonna join you."

Her phrasing was deliberate, and she waited for a moment, one ear turned towards my crystal while she kept her eyes averted, to see if I would invite him along. I shook my head. Not him. Not today. I just needed my mommy today. "Thanks, Mum. I'll see you there."

Despite the fact that classes were in session and there was no doubt Foop and I would both get dinged for cutting, I left the high school and even the high school grounds. I first considered leaving through the cafeteria, hoping I could blend with the crowd who liked to take their lunches out back, then realized trying to hide from watchful eyes wasn't going to happen for obvious reasons. So I just floated out through the front door instead. As soon as I left the Class 4 _poof_ -proof bubble around the school, I waved my wand and whisked over to the dining district in the neighboring town.

Anti-D'Hielo's was one of the only places in Fairy World that served traditional Anti-Fairy cuisine in traditional Anti-Fairy ways. I could think of a few establishments that served supposedly native dishes for a cheaper price, even when including the cost of _hiccup_ ing there with a wand, but I liked Anti-D'Hielo's. Foop didn't care if his meals were cheap so long as it was food he recognized, and would devour a _tuqawr_ of _kywtici_ wrapped in a cone of bakery paper from a greasy spoon cafe in just a few bites while sprinting across campus. I'd gladly pay by the buckets for the authentic atmosphere.

I landed on the teleport pad outside the garden, next to a stream and a bronze statue of a donkey taller than I was. The donkey was Twis' sacred animal, out of respect for the food he provided us from the clean soil every year. The cooking building was identifiable instantly by its arches and its rounded rather than scooping roof. It was the only establishment I knew in Fairy World that was guaranteed to be made of wood imported from Earth, instead of from trees ripped out of the cloudlands. The stone had been hewn from native foggilite quarries around Dragongasp Point; my family had contributed to the groundbreaking on Hy-Brasil's Day one summer when Foop was in his early sixty-thousands.

Not that Mum and I would even be eating inside that skinny building. That would be silly- that's where they cook! I removed my shoes and left them on one of the flat stones lining the stream. Then I passed beneath the trellis archway, laden with paper flowers at this time of year, and stepped into the dining courtyard. The rough stone scraped pleasantly beneath my bare toes. I moved carefully to avoid treading on any of the cracks. Circular tables were arranged neatly around the edges of the garden. The tables were low, of course, because modern chairs hadn't been invented by our people. We used them at the Blue Castle and many of our restaurants in Anti-Fairy World because the Fairies had taught us that chairs with high backs were proper, but Anti-D'Hielo's strove to get in touch with our older traditions. Rather than sit in chairs, we knelt at low tables. Proper meals weren't to be enjoyed upside-down.

Braziers crackled and glowed. The stream divided the courtyard in half, and there was a little bridge to walk over to the tables on the other side. Tall, lean trees with gorgeous black bark stretched into the sky, filling the air with rust-colored leaves. Brown lanterns hung in strings from the branches, although the candles inside wouldn't be lit until evening. Amazing, really, that a place like this could exist in the middle of a fussy city. My attention briefly captivated by the familiar taste of home, I accidentally walked straight into a Fairy - a Fairy! - floating towards my trellis arch as he sipped from a brown disposable cup. I gasped and floated to the side.

"Drk. Cherrywell!"

He sounded equally surprised to bump into me. "Foop?"

"Um…" I tugged hintingly at the hem of my sleeve. My crescent moon charm flashed. "Hi. I hope you had a good lunch break, professor."

Drk. Cherrywell shifted his wax and paper goblet to his other hand. "I did, actually. You know I love myself a taste of your beautiful culture. I even rewatched my time lockbox recordings from last week's assessment and finished my grading while I was in there. Feels good to be done."

Oh my smoke. He _didn't_. Not during a nice meal. Not in front of everyone. I almost died of secondhand embarrassment right there on the spot. Instead, I just twitched my ears and pulled my sleeves over my hands. "Oh. Okay."

"I'll admit, Hiccup, I'm very impressed. I certainly wasn't expecting you to outperform Foop on this assignment."

The way he phrased it wasn't a compliment at all. "Why, thank you so much," I said anyway. I lifted my arms in the air and waved them back and forth a bit. "Foop gets embarrassed about shaking his tail, but I just really get into dancing, you know?"

Drk. Cherrywell nodded. "You did very well. And don't forget, your write-ups are due tomorrow morning, before first period. That does go for both of you."

Was that a threat? My hands went into my sweatshirt pocket, but only for a second. I brought them together in front of my chest and put on my most endearing smile. "Ah, I thought we agreed that I could have until Sunday to finish it? It's hard for me to stay out in the body for long."

Drk. Cherrywell pointed two fingers at me with the hand that still clutched his wine cup. "If you had time to fritter away hours on the phone making _get-together_ plans" (He didn't use the word _date_ ) "with my son Skeeter last night, you had time to write a two-page reflection on what you learned during this unit."

I curled my interlaced claws into my knuckles. "Oh, dear. One of us isn't going to be very happy tomorrow, are they?"

He shook his head in apparent annoyance. Leaning his shoulder against a smaller donkey statue than the one by the teleport pad (which he was _not supposed to be doing_ ), he said, "I'll never understand why they let you into Advanced Communication Dance in the first place."

"Ah, I may not be a gyne, but I'm still a prince, and I may need to know how to waggle dance someday. And, I'm allowed to be in the same classes that Poof takes because unlike most Fairies, _supposedly_ , he wasn't born with a Finella reflex that _supposedly_ should drive him wild with the urge to kiss his Anti-Fairy counterpart. They said."

His eyes narrowed when I said "waggle". "I didn't mean because Poof was in there. And it's 'kill', not 'kiss'. The Finella reflex is the urge all Fairies are born with that drives them to _kill_ their own counterparts should their counterpart cross into their territory."

"Is it, though?" I maintained a completely straight face, staring at him with my eyes wide and hands still folded in front of my chest. Drk. Cherrywell sighed.

"You can have a deadline extension. You have until classes start on Friday to turn in that paper."

Briefly, I closed my eyes. Foop had finished his write-up last week. Me? I hadn't even started. I thanked Drk. Cherrywell anyway, pet the donkey statue twice between the ears, and continued through the courtyard. My shoulders slumped. Oh, why did there always have to be so much work to do in the world?

If my mother had passed beneath the trellis arch alongside me, Munn's presence would have tripped the sensors, and we would have been introduced to everyone in the courtyard with a flourish. But, I didn't carry Winni's favor. Someday (even if Foop thought he didn't have to), but not yet. It wouldn't be proper for everyone to stop eating and greet me, the mere heir presumptive, with their knuckles pressed to the right sides of their chests where the Breath symbol would be if the zodiac cycle pattern was printed on their shirts. Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda, yes. Me? No, it was okay. Only if they wanted to.

In the time it had taken me to cross the school and have my discussion with Drk. Cherrywell, Mum had made it to Anti-D'Hielo's. She stood now on one side of the courtyard, chatting with a table of six Anti-Fairies who (judging from the ribbons and feathered cloaks) were out celebrating someone's wedding. Her small ears flicked instantly my way when she detected my arrival. Following her lead, the group at the table turned to see who was important enough to distract their friendly High Countess. Their faces broken into enormous grins when they heard it was me. Everyone raised their hands, clapping lightly and shaking their wrists in that way we Anti-Fairies did.

I took a hesitant step, searching for the table with its seven colored chairs where Mum and I were supposed to be seated. Every traditional Anti-Fairy eating establishment had one set aside, always kept clean and ready in case the mediums of the zodiac spirits should ever show up. Mediums didn't need to bother with reservations unless they were arriving with more than seven people. Officially, I didn't have to sit at the medium table if I didn't want to, because I was young and didn't carry Winni's favor. If I ever came here with friends, I could eat with them in a normal place. But Mum represented the spirit of Sky and Acceptance, Prince Monday, on the camarilla court. It would be disrespectful for her to sit anywhere besides the spot so lovingly kept prepared for mediums every day.

Too emotionally drained to hold conversation with a half-dozen cheerful strangers, I was going to bypass them entirely, until a pup jumped up from her woven mat and hurried over to me. One of the older damsels (probably her mother) called a request for her not to bother me, but the child didn't listen. She still had blue _canetis_ rings weighing down her ears. Not even fifty years old yet, little thing. She stopped in my way and presented her hands up to me like an overturned dish, or a begging animal.

 _"Ben'argenta, V_ _äika! Sina'tava_ Hera Anti- _Odaviska_ _d'colimperia_ Anti- _Sukelijärveii. Koh sintu caneti?"_

I actually smiled. If she spoke Vatajasa that fluently, she was probably from the Far West Region. I identified as Far Westian myself, even though Foop was born in the High South Region. Either Hera came from there, or the Anti-Fallingwater colony simply made a conscious effort to teach their pups our old ways. Taking her hands in my own, I replied, _"Ben'argenta,_ Hera Anti- _Odaviska_ _. Sina'rija V_ _äika_ Nebula Anti-Cosma _d'colimperia_ Anti-Fairywinkle. _Zodii d'Higet_ _õ_ _kklo_. _Canetisana_ _?_ "

 _"Zodii d'Caelumava."_

 _"Ah, Caelumava! Nutiki ko d'imaline."_ I released her hands. _"Minjina d'nuttavum, sinella'rija Vürstlik_ Anti-Wanda _, autu Zodii d'Caelumava d'sintu."_

" _Cr_ _a_ _l_ _á_ _i! Sina kova kai."_ Hera folded her arms and looked me up and down, cocking her hips just so. She nodded knowingly. _"Koh_ _täna_ _genta_ Nebula _sintu_ _,_ _V_ _äika_ _?"_

Touched that a mere pup understood her prince's situation enough to ask the innocent question, "Which Nebula are you today?" I said, _"T_ _äna_ _genta s_ _ina_ ' _rija_ Hiccup."

 _"Ah! Sina kova_ _V_ _äika_ Hiccup _meliorpa_ _V_ _äika_ Foop."

I chuckled at her favoritism and wagged my claw. _"Abscon_ _salaductum_ _ära ex V_ _äika_ Foop. _V_ _äika Foop autu_ _ko d'imaline."_

Hera flapped both her hands downward dismissively. _"Päevgenta_ _minjina_ _d'Väika_ _sta_ Foop, _sina kova_ _V_ _äika_ Foop _meliorpa_ _V_ _äika Hiccup._ "

 _"Ah? Tepante?"_ Pretending her wishy-washiness hurt me, I traced an imaginary tear down my cheek. Hera grinned.

 _"Tepante,_ _Väika_ _. S_ _intu_ _d'saatar. Sin'tari zodiiasco._ _Sin'tari_ _t_ _õ_ _kklavie_ _."_ It's your fate. It's decided. Such is the command of the breath of life.

I shook my head in mock disappointment. Hera bowed and flew back to her parents. Her mother had her face in her hands, mortified into silence but laughing all the same. I paused by their table long enough to prove I had taken no offense at the child's enthusiasm. You know, it was really nice to see my people again. Sometimes, when I spent my days locked up in Carl Poofypants High, or shoved away inside Foop's head, I forgot that there were actually other Anti-Fairies like me who were allowed in modern times to live, work, and thrive just one city over. Maybe I should eat at Anti-D'Hielo's more often. Oh, but then people might begin expecting me, and I should hate to disappoint them if I didn't always show.

Thankfully, my mother sensed my anxiety and led me over to our reserved table before long. It stood in the center of the courtyard, framed by trees and giant blooming plants with long, slender leaves. Nice and low. Perfect for sitting by on a cushion. I placed my backpack on the ground. After taking my mother's hand while she sat and ensuring she was comfortable, I sat myself and adjusted the black tablecloth's edge over my lap.

"Ah, thank you for coming all the way out here on such short notice, Mum. The only place they serve anything relatively _Faeumbran_ on campus is in the rooftop restaurant, and it's run by Fairies who take Anti-Fairy Studies classes and serve quick-and-easy meals for their class project every year. I'm looking forward to this. Please don't let me rush off to the loo and throw up when I'm done eating."

"Awww." Mum clasped her hands on the table and smiled at me. "'Course not, spiderbum. I e'en went ahead and ordered your favorite fried noodle shells as soon as I got here. High Countess privileges, h'yuck. Fastest service in town you kin get."

I looked at her, keeping it together. And then, abruptly, dropped my head into my folded arms. "Mama, this term was so h-hard."

"Shh, shh," she murmured, reaching out to wrap her fingers around my wrist. Her thumb slid across the moon charm on my identification bracelet. "S'okay, baby. Don't mind anyone starin'. Let it all drip out."

I shook my head, but left it buried in my arms. I mimicked her wrapping gesture by clinging to her fingertips. We didn't say anything until our food arrived. Mum's the only one who never made me talk when I didn't want to, even though she could tell how stressed I was. Father would be going bananas trying to unravel me, and frustrated that I would dare withhold things from him. My roommates kept an awkward distance when I got upset, but that was because they didn't really like me. Even Foop viewed me as a code to be cracked and dissected, and badgered me incessantly about my sad feelings when he could. Mum understood me. I loved my mum.

"Food," she finally said, letting go of my hand. I nodded and, slowly, lifted my head. She really had ordered me a bowl of _fetika yika_. It even had shrimp and sprinkled cheese. My favorite.

"Goody, goody," I mumbled. I took the _ishredsi_ bowl and served her a portion, then served myself and returned the bowl to the serving tray. Mum took the wine pitcher and filled our goblets. When our server returned with a puff of _bunae_ dough, I lifted it delicately between my claws, and reached across the table. Mum opened her mouth. Very carefully, I placed the tiny pastry on her tongue.

"Good?" I asked as she chewed.

"Mmhm. Delicious, Puck."

"Oh, good."

Near the end of her reign generations ago, Anti-Shylinda, who became the very first High Countess of the Anti-Fairies, had been stricken with almost full-body paralysis after Saturn's hotblooded medium attacked her under a white flag of peace. With Anti-Shylinda unable to use her arms, her mate Anti-Kahnii had fed her spoonful by spoonful at the very first Unity Hunt Banquet with such tenderness that warring Anti-Fairies all across the cloudlands had stopped their bitter arguing to watch in silence. The crowd was so touched by the sight of such patient love that every noble Anti-Fairy in the cloudlands lay down their hot wands that day and agreed to support the Anti-Coppertalons and their bloodline as their overseers.

That had been the origin of the camarilla court, who advised the High Count and Countess on daily matters. We honored that practice even today. Technically, being the drake at the table with the tightest kin ties to the High Countess, I was supposed to dip the _gali-gali_ appetizers in my mother's soup and feed them to her one by one until they were gone. I wasn't supposed to eat until she finished with them. There were a lot of appetizers.

But Mum despised that etiquette practice. She said it made a lunch date take "two hours longer than any sane person thinks has gotta be necessary" and that she hated how awkward it felt to be eating while everyone else had to sit and be hungry. The custom only said she couldn't touch the _gali-gali_ with her own hands, magic, or any utensils, so naturally she'd discovered the loophole of eating them with her feet. My mum was clever that way. I'm sure people stared at her in her youth when she first started doing it, but nowadays, it was kind of her thing. She's not only creative, she's brilliant. I want to be just like her someday.

As salads, soup, and plates of meat continued to be brought out over the course of the next half hour, we ate without speaking. I gripped my spoon in my right hand, threading my claws over and over through my hair with the left. Every so often, an acidic tear would splatter onto the tablecloth and threaten to sizzle if I didn't notice it quickly enough and wipe it away.

The _fetika yika_ they made here was _so_ good. I hated indulging myself at the best of times, because my bulimia was a respecter of no food, even tastes I loved. Rhoswen's chisel, I hated being chubby, and I knew I would surely find myself purging this binge the moment Mum left my side. But today, I forced myself to focus on the flavors and textures of every cold, creamy noodle as it dissolved in my mouth. Just this once, I let myself believe that I _deserved_ this.

"Ain't it your roommate's birthday next week?" Mum asked, brushing her remaining _ishredsi_ and _dolline wik_ to one side of her plate with the curve of her spoon.

Was it? And how did she remember that? I pursed my lips. "Ah, which roommate would that be?"

She scooped up the bits and brought them to her mouth. "The cute one you like."

I choked on my spoon. "Mum!"

Keeping her eyes averted, she pushed another bite of _dolline wik_ onto her spoon with her fork. "What's his name again?"

"U-um…" Oh dear. Which cute one was she talking about? Clever trick. I pulled the collar of my sweatshirt up to my mouth. Then my hands shifted to the hood. I tugged it over my ears. My wings folded after it like an umbrella. After a few seconds, when I had regained myself, I opened my eyes again. "How… how long have you known I don't just like Anti-Fairies? Did Caudwell tell you? He promised he wouldn't tell. He shouldn't. He can't. He's my therapist and that would break our client confidentiality."

Twisting her leg like an expert, Mum scratched her cheek with her big toe. "When we was all racing li'l skyboats 'cross the Teal Region for the Flight's Honor Festival in the Summer a' the Spitting Embers. You or Foop, one of ya, invited him to join ya, and ya even let him steer your favorite skiff all the way ta the finish line. That's when I figured it out, but I reckon that weren't the first moment you started liking him."

Sweat gathered on the back of my neck. She'd known _that_ long? Had _I_ even known I liked Seelie Courters at that time? I hadn't even been close to getting my adult body back then! "Uh… nope. I've liked him for awhile now." I squeezed my eyelids shut. "A-are you mad? About me liking Seelie Courters too?"

"Nah. He's cute." She leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table. "So? What's his name?"

"Ffffffff…" I tugged on the collar of my sweatshirt and used my ears to push the hood off again. She _knew_ this! He'd been my roommate since Spellementary! She was just toying with me on purpose, like a manticore with its prey, so I would 'fess up. So much for allowing me the chance to save face. "Ah, well." I rolled my eyes. "I, um… He's Sammy Sweetsparkle. Um. Does Father know?"

"Nah. I don't gotta tell him nothing I don't wanna. I want you telling him only when you're ready. But I gotta wonder, how come you like both Seelie and Unseelie Courters, and you _still_ ain't dating anyone nice and serious yet?"

I shrugged and stirred my _fetika yika_ around some more. Mum tried again.

"Does Sparklepants boy even know ya got the goodies for him?"

"I can't tell him," I muttered. "Not yet. I should at least wait until he gets his adult wings. Then he can decide for sure if he likes drakes. And he'd have to decide if he's willing to let things happen between him and an _Unseelie_ drake. I'll be super, _super_ special if he gives me a candle's chance in The Darkness."

"Hey." Mum shot me a sharp look over the table. "We dun talk about The Wise Ancients when we's eating."

"Sorry." I raised my small, square soup bowl to my lips. "Mum, I've identified as 200,000 for almost my entire life. Sammy's not even 150k yet. I didn't even start liking him _kissy_ ways until just a few years ago. But how am I supposed to explain that I thought he was the coolest person even back when we were kids? I just don't know. There's no good way to phrase this without coming off as a creep. I can't like people my real age because the body's too young, but I can't like people the body's age because that's just creepy. I'm just going to wait until he's older. I choose to suffer. And suffer I shall, on principle."

Just the thought of confessing to Sammy made me want to puke up everything I'd eaten for a week, no bulimia required. I clutched the bowl tighter and hunched into my wings. Ah, well… At least I'd had a little bit of practice talking through the complicated puddle that was my existence and my identity when I came out to Finley and Anti-Marigold. Anti-Marigold is fun, but she's not exactly, ah, into me, and hearing the age I thought myself to be probably didn't score me any points in her book. I don't feel comfortable kissing her. At least not right now. She's too young for me.

Finley's different. He and I smooch every now and again because he doesn't have his adult wings yet, so Rhoswen syndrome doesn't affect him and we're taking advantage of that while we still can. We just do small kisses. It's difficult to explain why that doesn't bother me as much as the thought of kissing Sammy. I feel like I'm way older than Fin. Way, way too old to be kissing someone who doesn't have their adult wings. I think it's all because… I don't think I'm actually attracted to Finley. Not physically. I just like to cuddle up to him while he plays his video games, and I've never, _ever_ kissed him first. Not on the lips. I only do it when I know he's okay with it. I always make sure he knows it's me and not Foop out front when he kisses me, because I don't _think_ he kisses Foop like he kisses me, but it's still polite to let him know.

And I've told him I'm older than him, and he says it's okay. So even though I should probably get thrown back in jail for some of the thoughts about cute drakes and damsels my weird 200,000-year-old identity has had while trying to use Foop's way-younger brain to figure out what the world is like and who I'm attracted to, that's okay, right?

I hope so. I don't like to think about it much, because Finley only kisses me when he's pulled an all-nighter on one of his games and it's about 4:00 in the morning. Our beanbag kisses never last longer than two minutes, if they've ever gone that long at all. Maybe he's just impulsive when he's tired. We've never talked about it the next day or anything. Probably should, since we've been having this little affair of ours across half a decade. I don't think Foop knows. I guess I just kiss Finley because he's there, and I just like being able to touch and hug and hold another person in three dimensions. And to be honest, making a stoic pixie crack a smile when you cuddle and kiss him is kind of… adorable? It's an accomplishment to brag about if nothing else. Not everyone can say they did that.

Is that wrong? Probably. I mean, even if you take away the fact that Finley is Seelie and I'm not, I shouldn't be having thoughts like this about someone so much younger than I am. Maybe they're not my thoughts. They're the body's thoughts. The brain belongs to the body, not to my soul and consciousness. I'm something else. These thoughts don't belong to me. I don't want us to go back to jail. Especially not because of me. Foop wouldn't be able to handle that. He doesn't even like jail when it's his fault he got thrown in there. If I got us in jail and he had to pay the consequences for my actions and feel powerless all day, that might just break him, I think. Control is so important to him. Sometimes it's the only thing he has left. Sometimes he doesn't have it at all.

But I don't think what I've done is really so bad. Foop's done things that are way worse than anything bad that I've ever done, so I think I'm allowed to kiss a nice boy if I want to. As long as there's consent, because that's very important, you know. I'm a good person. I always get consent first. That's why I haven't kissed Sammy, even though I really, _really_ want to. More than I can admit to my mum. Kissing Finley some nights is just my way of killing time and perfecting my skills. When Sammy's old enough that I feel comfortable asking him, I want to know if he'll be my steady partner. I can wait. For him. He'll say yes to me. I mean, how could he not? I'm precious! He'll say yes. I know he will. I can wait.

I know our little thing is going to have to stop when Finley gets his adult wings. I'm actually okay with it. Maybe it's terrible to say, but I might even be relieved. Even though I don't have a significant other officially (I refuse to count Anti-Marigold as mine, because she's with Foop), I know I probably shouldn't be kissing Fin when the only Seelie Courter I really want to snuggle up with is Sammy.

 _Sammy_.

Sammy embodied everything. He was adorable as a stocking cap full of buttons, with the unbreakable spirit of a dragon tamer. Thoughtful and quiet he may appear from a distance, he knew how to let loose at a party. I could still remember slipping silently past Foop to take control of the body one day when we were young, hovering in the corner of the lounge with the balloons as I crushed my plastic cup of apple juice, just gazing at Sammy when he danced with the grace of a snowflake as if he didn't care who saw a part of him that most Fairies generally played closer to the vest. When the proper school uniform came off, the leather jacket went on. And Tarrow help the souls he captivated with his gentle beauty then. Music lived beneath his blood. _Handsome_ wasn't the right word for Sammy, and neither was _hot_. Sammy wasn't sexy. He was just… _beautiful_. Wispy blond hair, fluttering lashes, cheery violet eyes. And I loved that.

I didn't care about Finley's warm, random kisses on my cheeks. Not as much as I probably should have, since he was technically giving a part of himself to me too those evenings when he reeled me in, even if he always kept one eye on his video games. Oh, no. You see, I wanted to touch _Sammy's_ soft lips, hold _Sammy's_ shoulders in a hug, lower him down to soft blankets while I quietly kissed his face and he giggled in the way that melted my fangs into the roof of my mouth…

I stared longingly at the last _chaishoa_ scone in its serving dish. My mother held seniority at the table, and by right it was to go to her. But she noticed I was looking and nudged the bowl towards me.

"Here."

Mortified, I pushed it back. "Oh mercy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply I wanted it. Forgive me, please."

Mum stabbed her fork in the scone, then placed it on my eating dish and scooted it off with the spoon. Gratefully, I lifted my eyes. "Thank you. Ah, you know, Mum… Sammy _is_ having his birthday next week. I remember he was trying to figure out what to do about the party. After all, because he's one of the huldufólk, he can't be the one to serve treats. Birthdays are important in huldu culture, and I think I want to do something for him. Perhaps I could offer him the Castle for his celebration, and we could cater?"

"That sounds right doable if you're askin' me. I'll talk it over with your daddy."

"Oh, yay."

"Think he'll ask why?"

"Who? Father? Oh. Well, if he does, I'll just tell him I know a cute boy, and I like it. I don't mind."

On our way out, Mum and I paused to rub the ears of the donkey statue again. The brass had mostly worn away on the head, shining and glimmering like the prettiest lucky coin in town. I rubbed them a little too long, I suppose, because Mum reached her hand towards me. "Hey. Are ya ready to go back ta school now, Puck?"

"Back? No. Mama…" My eyes spilled over with tears, every bit. "Oh. Oh, I'm sad now." I held her hand up to my cheek and hiccuped once. "Mum, I just… I don't know. I don't know why I have to _be_ like _this_."

Her eyes softened. "Hiccup, maybe you are an alternate personality that grew outta Foop's mind when he broke in jail, but you ain't less real to me. Hey. I love you. You's my darling li'l sugar-sweet son. I love ya like I gave birth to ya, and I kinda did. Y'all know I love ya just as much as I love Foop. Right?"

"What about Talon?" I sniffled.

"Aww, just as much as I love Talon."

I squeezed my eyes tight. "What about Smoky?"

"Just as much as I love Smoky."

"What about…" Pulling out my handkerchief, I tried to think of a single 'nother familiar face in the Castle. Specifically, I tried not to hate myself for being locked away in the mindspace so much that I didn't feel like I knew many other Anti-Fairies who were actually in my cohort.

Mum brought her hand to the back of my hand, to the curls in my hair that weren't supposed to be mine. "I love ya just as much as I love your father. And my sis, and all your li'l cousins. You's in my family too, Hiccup. You belongs with us."

I dabbed at my eyes with the small square of dark blue cloth. "Ah, it's just very difficult right now? I'm so happy that I could eat out with you today, but I wish I could eat out with friends I really like and trust. Th-there's so many cute boys at school. I'm trying so hard… so hard… I'm trying to wait until we're older before I get too, ah, carried away with things, Mum? But I've been a 200,000-year-old trapped in a prepubescent body my whole life. Th-this isn't what I look like… This isn't me. I don't look like this. I have blue hair. I have green eyes. I do. This isn't my body. It's Foop's. And we're an adult now. I can use it to swing my hips and get the boys I like now, if I want to."

Her arms went around my back, carefully beneath my wings in that place that only mothers knew how to find. She rubbed one hand up and down, making small spiral patterns with her palm. "I know, baby."

I… I was shaking. Why did I have to be shaking? Mum hugged me, and I stood there blinking through the open coffered roof beams of the cooking building's overhanging entrance, clutching my handkerchief in my fist. My toes clenched the stone. "Um, it's s-so hard right now, having a body that's almost as old as I am. I'm _so_ close, but I'm not there yet, and that's s-so hard for me, you see. It's just very hard when I like a cute Fairy with their adult wings, and I have to make myself stop before we exchange saliva. O-or when I like an Anti-Fairy and I want to go further than kisses. The body is basically old enough now, but I have to make myself s-stop…"

"I know."

I rubbed my eyes with my sleeve. "I have a date tonight… Skeeter Cherrywell. Except he won't call it a 'date,' just a 'hang-out.' We're going for ice cream on the other side of campus. It's just a little thing… He's so cute, Mum, even though he's Seelie, and I want to kiss him with saliva so badly, but he's got his adult wings, and also I'm s-scared of the real version of Rhoswen syndrome that's supposed to drive you gumdrop crazy when you kiss across Court lines, so I c-c-can't… I don't want to keep my hands off cute boys anymore. Or cute girls. I'm not in a baby body anymore. This body's old enough that I'm actually starting to feel okay being alive in it, and it's so hard…"

"Puck, listen ta me." Mum's fingers closed over my jittering hands. Even though I was sniffling and gross, it didn't stop her from pulling me towards her and giving me a kiss on the forehead. "Hey. Shh, hey. I know it's hard. It's so hard, and I'm so, so awesomely proud of ya for trying as hard as you've been like this. I get that there's cute boys. Huh. You know, I see cute boys all the time too."

"You do?"

"Mmhm. You know how I like traveling?" She cupped her hand behind my head, cradling one of my lower curls. "There's cute boys everywhere I go. And there's some days when that's tough. I were a wild child once."

I snickered. "You? No. You're the High Countess. Ah, I don't believe you were ever as young as me. You've probably been High Countess for fifty million years."

"Don't believe your own mum? What's this world come to all a' sudden, huh?" Mum stuck her tongue out at me. "Yep! I chased all the boys back when I was your age. I chased every boy in the whooole world."

I snickered again and shook my head at the ground. "Oh Mum, you didn't chase all the boys."

"Maybe not all of 'em," she amended thoughtfully. "Still. You think it's easy bein' this pretty when I go out on my travels?"

"No. S'not."

Mum rubbed my shoulder. "Lemme tell ya, Hiccup, I gots gorgeous drakes and damsels throwin' 'emselves at my two goshdarn lovely feet every day a' my life. And that's tough some days, knowing that I shoul'n't, knowing your pop'd be so sad. There's cuties everywhere, but I stick to my wands and I do it for him."

"Yeah…"

"But Hiccup, you gotta hear me out." Her fingers tightened. "I know Fairy-Poof's got his adult wings. I know you's got an adult body, and you's starting to get adult feelings inside you that make you wanna go cuckoo feathers over cute boys and girls. But this body you're in's still a crack too young for foolin' around with loving on the roost. Y'all ain't even 150,000 yet. It ain't legal."

I wiped one final time at my eyes and put my handkerchief away. "That's not my fault. This body's the only one I have."

"And you're doing amazing at taking care of it just the way Foop would want ya ta, sourpuff."

"I don't like it," I mumbled into her shoulder when I accepted her embrace. "I want a boyfriend, or even a girlfriend, so much. I want to kiss my special someone in _my_ body. The body I have when I'm in the mind. Mama…" My arms squeezed her tighter. "I'm a handsome young man. I look so nice. You would love my real body. It's so chubby, b-but I have beautiful green eyes just like Father, and pretty blue curls. This is Foop's body. It's not me. I'm older than this. I'm old enough to kiss and cuddle with my boyfriend or girlfriend, and it's not weird. It's not weird. And they like me for me. They do, though?"

She cradled my cheek, just like she always did, in that way that only she always did. I closed my eyes. "What's your daddy always say, Puck?"

 _"Snff._ Oh. 'If it's our fate, it will happen in its own time'…"

"I jist need ya ta hold on a li'l bit longer, Hiccup. You's almost old enough. But not yet. Not yet."

"I know," I whispered, and it was so hard to pretend for another day, another week, another lifetime that I didn't have needs. Oh, I really, really wanted to be good. For _him_.

At least I knew Foop wouldn't take a cute boy or girl up to roost before I did. Or at least, I really hoped he wouldn't… And clinging to my mum's shoulder, I squeezed my talons into the creases of her jacket and choked back my brand new sob. Oh. Oh, I really hoped he wouldn't. I mean, I know it's his body and he can chase after drakes or damsels if he wants to, but he doesn't like that kind of thing as much as I do, and I've waited so long for this, so that would really, really hurt my feelings if he did.


	48. (22) Hate That I Love You

_Summary:_ It's H.P.'s first birthday, and the same day his grandfather Praxis Whimsifinado happens to swing by the Fairy Academy to visit.

 _Characters:_ Ambrosine, Solara, H.P., Praxis

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Fatal Mistake" / "Mature"

 _Prerequisites:_ None, but the more familiar you are with my 'fic _Origin of the Pixies_ , the better

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 **22\. Hate That I Love You** (H.P.'s first birthday)

 _Year of Breath; Winter of the Green Bat_

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It would have been a crowded birthday party, if they knew anyone to invite. Both of Ambrosine's roommates had coughed and ruffled their wings when he'd pressed them to find if they were going to be there, and hadn't come back since. That left him in the little Academy dorm with his quote-unquote damefriend all afternoon, and that was supposed to be great, wasn't it? A room full of light snacks and a pretty damsel watching him kneel on the rough cloudstone floor with the crumpled posters and watered-down paints? He'd even managed to smuggle two whole packs of assorted cookies past his comb's resident adviser. Solara had eaten an entire sleeve of them herself, sprawled across his simple gray bed on her back.

"Come on, jump already, kiddo." She waved another minty cookie over their son's head. "Aw, you can do it. Jump. Fergus, why won't you jump for it? A cù sith would jump for it."

The nymph didn't stand up, or uncross his arms. Surrounded by bright, sparkling blobs of finger paints squirted out from crushed bottles, with fresh bark strips for his canvas (the cheap kind, not that he needed to know), and he wouldn't uncross his arms. Ambrosine couldn't help but shake his head every time he looked at him. What a weird kid.

But he loved that weird little kid anyway, more than he'd ever loved anyone or anything before, except maybe, _maybe_ , Solara's beautiful navy blue waves and curls. Ambrosine always knew he wanted kids someday, although Fergus had of course been… unplanned. In retrospect, he ought to have kept more honey contraceptives on hand, but such things were getting scarcer as the Great Ice Times ravaged Earth far below, so what was a simple drake to do?

Granted, Fergus wasn't a curious soul. He was stiff and serious, and not particularly liable to stumble across a jar of honey hidden away with the breakables and cotton balls in a high cabinet anyhow. Especially considering how much he preferred the ground level. _Curious_ , no, but the instant the little rebel suspected his father might be keeping something away from him intentionally, he would be on that jar in a wingbeat. And Ambrosine had learned all too quickly that Fergus (Bless his core) had been afflicted with a severe honey allergy from the moment of his birth. So Ambrosine gave him spoonfuls of grape jelly as a form of positive reinforcement when he did something right instead. And of course, there would be other downsides to such an allergy once he came of age and was chasing pretty damsels of his own… How unfortunate for him.

Especially when considering the matter of the freckles. Ambrosine hadn't yet resisted the urge to run his thumb across Fergus' face every time he scooped the child into his lap; his precious nymph had such dashing freckles. They'd only come in a week ago, pale and salty against his sharp cheeks and up his nose. Ambrosine knew what they meant and he accepted them nonetheless. By natural insect law, those folk who showed so many freckles were born to be commanders. Warriors. Murderers, oftentimes.

True. Everyone said young gynes grew up to kill their fathers, and that adult gynes killed their freckled young. More gynes probably ended up abandoned with changeling host families before their first birthday than didn't. Ambrosine's roommates urged him to subject Fergus to the same fate, but Ambrosine had always refused their pestering. With his squarish features and stubby, crooked wings, the little nymph had never been quite so "normal" anyway. What were a few freckles between father and son then?

To some people, a lot. So many people believed gynes to be such a primal type of creature that it was like they didn't even see them as Fairies. Ambrosine's own father was unfortunately one of them. Praxis Whimsifinado was out in front of the Academy's main on-campus restaurant right now for the career and recruitment fair, checking out the students delving into psychology and attempting to persuade them on the merits of Wish Fixers over the cloudlands' other therapy options (the Applebloom's in particular).

Praxis had often lauded back in the days of Ambrosine's youth, gynes were slaves to their base instincts, and ought to be changelinged with the infants of another race in the universe while they still had a chance. The man was a traditional fairy in that regard. Ambrosine had only barely gotten word of his father's coming the day before this one, and managed to send Solara and Fergus out while he worked frantically to wipe any trace of having a baby from the apartment. All the more reason to stay inside today. Father busy. Bedroom secure. It was logical fact, really.

"I don't want a birthday," Fergus said.

Ambrosine finished marking out the word _Sewing_ on his poster, then set down his paintbrush and stretched his cramping wrists. "Why don't you want a birthday?"

"Because we don't usually have birthdays. This is different. This is weird." Fergus picked up a small brown pouch lying just within arm's reach. Ambrosine took it away and clipped it to his belt.

"Don't play with that. That's Dad's s-s-special psychology class satchel. My central test theory assignment is coming up and I have forget-a-cin in there. I'm s-supposed to find a subject whose memory I can wipe so I can run them through the s-same trial multiple times and observe their reactions."

"I don't need a birthday. I didn't need one last month. Why do I need one now?"

"Because you're getting older. You're growing up."

Fergus wiggled his toes. He'd stretched his legs out in front of him probably… two hours ago? Going on three? Ambrosine had never known a nymph who could sit still and quietly on the floor for so long, let alone with a heavy chunk of stone in his lap, let _alone_ with posture so stiff and straight, but he planned to love and support the little guy anyway.

"I know what your plan is," said the nymph at last.

"My plan?"

Fergus locked an unnervingly solid stare on Ambrosine's face. "Yes. I do. You think if you give me a party, I'll want to go outside again. Well, I don't. I already had to go out this morning when I didn't want to. I'm not going again. I'm staying right here."

Ambrosine took a fresh brush and dipped it in the blue squirt of paint. As he started on the letter _C_ , he said, "I'm giving you a party because I like you, speck, and I want you to be happy."

Fergus continued to pierce him with that unblinking lavender gaze. He'd gotten those purple eyes from Solara (although hers were slightly bluer, so… not really sure where the genetics came from there, actually). "Dad. Birthday parties don't make me happy."

"Well, you have me stumped there. We need to s-sit you down and do a functional assessment one on one, don't we? Let's see." Ambrosine broke eye contact to finish painting the word _Club_. "Hmm. What actually is reinforcing for you? You like pretzel s-sticks. And pancakes. And impromptu naps."

Solara rolled to her stomach, folding her hands so the foil cookie packet crinkled. "I can't believe we have the only baby in the world who doesn't know how to have fun. Amby, he'll be the death of us. _Drakes_ … Fergus, here. Snickerdoodle. Jump for the snickerdoodle."

Fergus kept his eyes trained on Ambrosine for a moment longer, then turned his head. "I'm not jumping for that, Mommy. Also, I can't reach it even if I do jump. It's too high. I know what you're doing."

With a shrug, Solara popped the cookie in her mouth and rummaged in the packet for another one. "If you had any idea how much sugar was in this thing, you'd jump for it."

"'Lara, we've been over this." Ambrosine glanced up at her face for the first time since she'd wandered into his little cell of the sprawling Academy hive with its central fire pit, meal table, and three rumpled beds. From under the scarf on her head, a single loop of hair curled into a beautiful swirly S right between her eyes. Oh, Solara was always a gorgeous sight to behold, but Ambrosine couldn't ignore the way her eyes roamed across him as much as they did the humble furnishings: like she didn't really see him there. The knees of his pants had started to wear thin from all his crouching and rubbing against the floor. His hands were still up to the wrists in wet paint, and his forehead had started to itch awfully, but Ambrosine didn't dare scratch it with his fingers coated in such a mess. Purposefully skimming his wings together to refocus her attention, he said, "I don't want him tasting sugar until he's older. His brain's still developing. You'll s-stunt his growth."

Solara crunched through another gingersnap and swallowed before she answered. "He just shed his exoskeleton this week. He's a baby; it's not like he's going to remember anything that happened today." Slipping off the bed, she floated around behind her quote-unquote drakefriend to size up the sewing club posters, and poked his hand with her bare foot. "Not bad. You know, speaking of things we've been over a hundred times, we really need to stop dancing around the subject. Amby, the kid's a year old, and he still can't _F-L-Y_."

"I don't need to fly," Fergus announced. When Ambrosine glanced over, his son unfolded his arms and instead started tapping the chisel in his hand against his teeth. His chubby fingers, nearly swallowed in the thin gray sweater Ambrosine had swiped from the lost-and-found, slid across a row of gashes down the stone tablet in his lap. "It's dumb. There's nothing to read up there. And walking is a lot less tiring anyway."

Solara tossed the cookie wrapper in the general direction of the wastebasket. It didn't make it, and twirled down to the dirty floor. "I see you've learned your alphabet since the last time I stopped by."

"No, just my ABCs." Fergus paused. "How do you spell 'podium'?"

Ambrosine dropped his gaze to the first paintbrush again, with a dot of bright yellow still clinging and now hardening at the tip of its hairs. Taking it, he started sketching out a curl of golden thread. "Well, there's a big word for a little mouth like yours. Good job, Fergus. S-Solara, can you get the itch between my eyes?"

"Sure." She felt down his face until she found Ambrosine's nose. Her nails were long and pink, and they felt… _perfect_ scratching across his skin. He leaned his head back against her stomach.

Fergus straightened his shoulders importantly, which somehow made him look squarer than he already was. The spiral cowlick, a Whimsifinado family source of pride, that uncoiled from the lower back of his hair bobbed every time he moved. "Dad, help me spell this word. It's more important than the things you're doing."

"Podium. P-O-D-I-U-M." As Solara withdrew her fingers, he glanced over and said, "What are you writing?"

Fergus copied the symbols down carefully. Or he made the attempt, at least. His chisel was more of a shallow scratching tool than an actual carving one. The faint white marks it left on the tablet could be wiped away by a stray finger, but it seemed to make him happy enough, so Ambrosine let him entertain himself that way. "I'm making up new court cases for the game I'm playing with Bracket and Starbright," Fergus said. "I'm being both lawyers."

Ambrosine considered the two names as he sat back on his heels. Solara's bare toes poked absently his own. More importantly, since he'd gotten her off the bed and behind him, she was perfectly willing to comb her pale fingers through his black hair in that deep, quick way that always sent shivers down his wings. "Bracket and Starbright are almost five decades older than you, Fergus. They'll be off to Spellementary School this s-summer."

"Yeah, so?"

"In just five decades, you'll be off to S-Spellementary School too."

"Yeah, so?"

Solara's fingers tightened until she clasped two fistfuls of his hair by the roots. Leaning over Ambrosine, she drooped her weight against his shoulder. That pinched one of his wings, but he ignored it and just looked up at her instead. The usual purple scarf kept her gorgeous starry night sky hair folded completely back and out of sight. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Today was a special day, and _maybe_ if he did an excellent job on these posters, and if he could get Fergus to go down in his box for the night without a lot of fuss, Solara would actually let it down for him, and he could take his hairbrush and work some _real_ magic with that theoretical canvas. If it were going to happen, tonight would be the night for it. Her lower lip glistened blue with gloss, and she pushed it out in a pleading pout. "Amby, we _have_ to. It's the only way he's going to learn."

"Learn what?" Fergus asked, pausing from his work to squint up at them. The certain way he tended to half-lid his eyes made him appear critical beyond his years.

Solara rubbed her wings together for emphasis. She let go of Ambrosine's hair (a shame), and he exhaled air and dry magic in a long, steady stream. "I don't want any damsels getting him plugged up with babies before he's ready. And if he gets assaulted, he needs to have an escape plan."

"'Lara, we can't just…" He made a hand sign to suggest the words _Drop him from the roof._ "That's not allowed. If we get spotted, we are s-so toasted."

"Where am I not allowed?"

"Amby…" Her voice pitched into a whine. Her fingers moved to massage several wasp stings on her right arm. Alas, poor Solara- she adored Earth, but for some reason or another, the wasps on that planet adored her too. "I want him to grow up in Fairy World. If he sets one foot on Earth in this condition, the will o' the wisps will snatch him up and drag him down to their burrows. That's not the life I want for him. This is important to me."

"What's important to you?"

Ambrosine fingered the two paintbrushes under his hands. The last time Solara had used that voice on him, he'd gotten suckered into designing her sewing club posters. And a few times before that, he'd bought her that sparkling crown-polishing rag she saw at the swap meet. And some time before that, the night when Fergus had been conceived, their first time together, after she'd let him braid her flowing hair…

He knew he was just reinforcing her whining behavior by giving in. Intermittently reinforcing it, too. It didn't help either of them, but Ambrosine had witnessed his damefriend in the midst of an extinction burst once before, and he never wanted to make that mistake again, even if it went against everything the psychology classes were trying to beat into his head. He picked at a splotch of green on his wrist.

"I don't like having to force him. He's just a baby."

"Force me to do what?"

"He's a year old." Solara placed her hands around his neck and brought her head down to his level. Warm effervescence closed over his ear. "Your dad forced you. Mine forced me."

"Yes. That is exactly why I didn't want to force him."

"And we turned out fine, didn't we?"

"Why are you two fine?"

"Well, I don't exactly have a trusting relationship with Praxis."

"Who's Praxis?" Fergus demanded, popping his thumb out of his mouth.

Solara rotated his face until their noses bumped together. Her eyes had gone wide, pupils enormous against her violet-blue irises like, well… little solar eclipses. "It's natural. Birds do it."

"What's natural?"

Ambrosine squirmed as her fingers slid along his neck. "W-we're not birds, 'Lara. I don't want to s-scare him."

"You're working on a central test theory project anyway, aren't you?" She glanced meaningfully at the satchel with the forget-a-cin on his belt. "If he gets scared, use the stuff and start him over again."

"What's 'the stuff?'"

Well. She was right about one thing. The project was due Friday afternoon, and now it was Thursday morning. Ambrosine hadn't even started. He'd been procrastinating because Solara had come to spend the weekend for their son's birthday. He did need a test subject whose memory he could wipe multiple times, and if Fergus learned to fly after it was over, all the better.

Still…

"I don't know. Th-there just isn't a good place to practice."

"We can do it on the balcony. We have a balcony." Solara's tempting fingers crept back towards his scalp. "He'll never forgive you if he grows up never learning how. You can't coddle him forever. He needs this. I need this."

Fergus lowered his chisel. "What's out on the balcony?"

With another sigh, Ambrosine dipped his hands in the water bucket on his left. "You know, not much. Pretty scenery."

"Hmm. Sounds boring. I'm in." Fergus brushed his hand across his tablet, then laced his fingers together and set them in his lap. "What exactly are we going to do on the balcony? If _she's_ suggesting it, it must be a special occasion. Not just my birthday."

"We're going to fly," Solara said, retying the purple scarf over her hair. Sigh. Ambrosine probably had more of a love-hate relationship than with the damsel herself.

Fergus considered this proposal with his fingers steepled in front of his chin. Then he turned towards Ambrosine. "Maybe I wasn't clear. I don't do flying."

Ambrosine rinsed the first of his brushes. He pressed his thumb carefully down on the bristles to shake loose the hard chips of paint. "Well, we're going to fix that today."

"How?"

"By encouraging your instincts to kick in."

"Why?"

"Because flying is important. You'll need to be able to get around."

"Why?" Sulkily, Fergus dropped his eyes to the folded hands in his lap. "All the types of wingless Fairies - the naiads, I think is what they're called - don't have to fly. They get around fine."

"Let's just go," Solara complained from her place by the balcony exit. She already had the curtain lifted with her arm, checking for any rogue Fairies who might be flitting around.

"In a minute." Ambrosine lay on his belly so he was more level with his son. "That's right. There are many Fairies who don't have wings. That's why s-society uses taxes to build things like the tram system, so cars on cables can carry Fairies between all the thousands of islands that make up the cloudlands. But those can be expensive sometimes. Flying is free. And really, wouldn't you just not want to rely on someone else for s-simple things as you're growing up? What if the trams had to be repaired one day, and you were in a rush to get to school or work?"

"Then I'd _poof_. Duh."

Ambrosine sighed. Gingerly, he pushed his thumb into Fergus' freckled cheek and traced a stray pattern across his skin (Fergus leaned away). "You're not getting into the s-spirit of this. Listen. I've been saving up money so I can buy you a wand of your very own. You can start learning magic once I do. But until then, let's s-start small, by teaching you how to use your wings."

"But I can run up the stairs under people's floating feet faster than I can elbow my way to the top, trying to wriggle my way through the crowd and getting my wings bumped."

"Just pick him up and carry him," Solara groaned again. "It's not hard. Can we please go? The coast is clear right now. I don't want to be out here when the crowds start coming back. Amby, you know how I feel about crowds."

"Fergus." Ambrosine scooted forward on his elbows. "Can you trust me? I'm a lot older than you are. I promise, there are many times in life that you will wish you could fly. It's easiest to learn when you're young."

Fergus rubbed his knuckles. "The trams move between the clouds faster than you can fly, and it makes you less tired."

"That's right. But this is important to me and your mommy. Will you do it? Please?"

As Fergus' resolve began to waver, Solara motioned again for them to join her. "Amby, he's one year old. You don't have to turn _everything_ into a teaching opportunity.

"Well, I c-can't just make him, Solara. He's his own person and I want to respect his choices. Can't you be p-patient?"

"One way or another, be it age or forget-a-cin, he's not going to remember this." Her voice turned more incredulous than annoyed. She patted her hip, searching in vain for the wand sheath she'd left on the bed. "Just _poof_ him straight out there. He doesn't know any better; it's for his own good anyway. Fergus, sweetie, get my wand."

Ambrosine sat up. "Fergus, stay right where you are."

Solara snapped her fingers, more and more with every passing second as the nymph scrambled to comply with her request. "Fergus, hand me my wand."

Ambrosine locked his eyes on his son. "Fergus, you do that and you won't get any juice at dinner."

Fergus looked back and forth between them, his usual panic flaring up in his square face when faced with two competing tasks at the same time. He dropped the wand to the floor and pressed both hands over his ears. "Solara," Ambrosine sighed, getting up and crossing to the nymph's side. He picked Fergus up and held him to his neck. "You can't s-snap at him like that. He's just a baby. He doesn't know he's doing anything wrong. All he knows is that you're loud and s-scary when you're mad at him."

Solara ignored him. Floating over, she scooped her sheath from the bed and buckled it around her waist. Then she grabbed her wand off the floor and shoved it inside with a tough scrape of wood against leather. "Fergus, I'm your mommy. When I ask for something to be done, I need it done. Okay? Say 'Okay.'"

Ambrosine brought his hand to the back of Fergus' head. "His wings are twitching. You s-scare him when you're angry."

"How could I be scaring him?" Solara's hands slid up to her hips. She cocked her head about thirty degrees to one side. "All I did was give him a simple instruction. That's the same thing you do. He's old enough to bring his mommy a wand when she asks him to."

Ambrosine took a step back, tightening his grip. His eyes flicked left and right across her face. Quietly, one of his hands moved to the satchel hanging beside his wand sheath. "S-Solara, you have to be patient with him. He's emotionally s-sensitive, and yelling at him when he's nervous doesn't do any good. Don't yell. Please don't yell…"

"I'm not yelling," she protested, and her gaze fell on the hand digging in his satchel pocket. Her wings drooped. "Oh, don't you dare. Ambrosine, don't you _dare_. This is _not_ the time. If you say one word about central test theory and thought experiments, I will fly right out of this room. Do you hear me? I'm not coming back."

The tears blurred his vision too much to tell if she was looking him in the eye. Ambrosine clenched his hand around his satchel. "I'm s-sorry. I'm sorry. Please don't be mad. I just can't lose you too, Solara. I can't."

"And I can't believe this. You're actually going to do it." Solara threw her hands in the air. "I don't know why I keep putting up with this; I could have any drake I wanted if I really tried, and yet here I am, sticking things out with you, just because you're the one that had to go and get pregnant on the very first night, of all things. First night, Ambrosine." Her fingertips moved to her eyes. "And here we are again, and you're doing that thing you do every time I voice the slightest disagreement with you. I can't do this. Why do I keep doing this? I can't. It's times like this that I wonder if we should split up-"

 _"No!"_ Ambrosine grabbed the canister from his satchel, smashed its button, and flashed the light in her eyes. Fergus squeezed his hands over his ears. His tight throat bobbed against Ambrosine's neck. Solara fell back on the bed, dizzy and fumbling for purchase with her hands.

It was a moment before she managed to straighten up again. When she did, it was in slow motion. She wiped her face with the back of her wrist. Her eyes latched onto the little yellow canister in Ambrosine's shaking hand. He saw the pain bleeding from her face when she raised her eyes to lock with his.

"What? Amby? Y-you used the forget-a-cin on me?"

Ambrosine withdrew, wrapping his arm (canister still clenched in his fist) around the back of Fergus' head. "You wouldn't s-s-stop yelling at me!"

"What did you take?"

"I- I just- You were mad- You were mad, and I just- I'm s-sorry." His wings jittered against his back. "'Lara, please don't be mad. Y-you know I love you, right?"

Solara wiped her face with both hands, one after the other. Softly, they fell back into her lap with the palms upturned. "Oh. Oh. Yes. I love you too, Amby. I've trusted you with my everything, and I still love you even when you're afraid of losing me. I know you don't mean to. I know you don't always think when you're panicking, and you're scared. But you can't do this anymore. It isn't fair to me."

"I'm s-sorry… I'll stop… I promise, I'll stop…"

Her eyes slid from his face to his arms, and to the large nymph clinging to his chest. "Right. We… We were going to take Fergus out flying. Weren't we, Fergus?"

Fergus did not respond. Ambrosine bounced him in his arm, and their son finally turned his head and forced words around his thumb. "I guess you were. I still hate everything."

Ambrosine ran his fingers through the nymph's black hair. It was silky and shiny like his mother's, even though the color was dull and it would never be long enough to pin or braid. "Yes. Yes, you're going to learn to fly today. I know you're s-scared, but I think you're very brave."

"I'm not scared. I just don't see the point of flying." Fergus took Ambrosine's cheeks in his little hands and looked at him very seriously. "I don't want to do this, Dad. But I trust you. I'll try."

"Thank you, Fergus." Ambrosine set his son down on the floor, and slid the forget-a-cin canister back into the pouch on his belt. "I appreciate it."

"That's my good little drake." When Fergus stretched up his arms, Solara actually knelt down and scooped him into her lap, much to Ambrosine's surprise. As she stood with the large baby cradled in her arms, he caught the coils of blue hair that leaked out from her scarf in his fists, twisting it around his hands. Solara's curious smile shifted to one of straining patience.

"Fergus," Ambrosine scolded, reaching towards him once again. "Don't mess up Mommy's hair. Mommy likes her hair just the way it is."

Solara passed the child over and brushed off her skirt. Then she held out her hand. "Shall we go?"

Swallowing, Ambrosine placed his palm in hers and wound their fingers together. "We should."

Solara did the honors with a whisk of her hand, yanking aside the gray curtain that led out to the balcony. Both Ambrosine and Fergus shielded their faces and blinked at the light, even if it only came from the stars.

"Now." On dainty feet, Solara crossed the balcony to its thick rail and peered over the edge. "It's all clear down below. Come on, Fergus. Up on the railing; there we go, Mommy's got you. See? It's wide and strong enough to stand on. You're supposed to do this. We're meant to fly. Even our buildings are designed for it; we're a very logical society. All you need to do is walk straight off the edge and let your instincts do their stuff."

Fergus, standing, put one foot over the drop and let it stay there while Ambrosine squirmed in the background. Then he turned around and sat, preparing to slide back to the solid balcony. "Nup. Not doing this."

"Fergus," Ambrosine pleaded, finally coming forward. "Your mother is right. You need to learn to fly."

"Why?"

"Because that's what I need you to do today."

Solara crouched until her face was level with their son's. "Let's do it together, hon. Just spread, drop, and flap."

Fergus wrinkled his brow. His thumb slipped into his mouth. "Spread, drop, and flap?"

"That's right. Three things. You can remember three things, can't you?"

"Spread, drop, and flap."

"Mmhm. It's logical. Watch me demonstrate." Solara sat beside him, swung herself onto the railing, then hopped to her feet. She posed, pointing her toes like the stage performer she'd always wanted to be. Her pale wings flew out to either side, sweeping open like thick sails. Ambrosine pressed the pads of three fingers against his lips. Silhouetted against the purple evening sky, her shoulders thrust back and chest out, chin high, her dress dancing against her calves in the light breeze, she looked absolutely s-s-stunning. Even with her hair tucked away beneath her scarf. Dear dust, he wanted to marry that dame. It would never work, of course, and not just because he was so anxious and she was so scared of him, although that was certainly part of it. But for just one moment, Ambrosine pretended that it could.

"Spread. Drop." Facing them both, Solara crossed her arms in an X over her chest, leaned, and plunged straight backwards off the balcony rail. Fergus scrambled up to see her fall, and Ambrosine came to stand behind him.

"And up!" Solara spiraled upward, her wings flared behind, and twisted to watch her son's reaction. He folded his arms, unimpressed.

"It's too high. I don't want to."

"You don't even want to jump off the bed," she complained. "In fact, you're more likely to crash if we start you on anything smaller than this. The height gives you more time to ease into what you're doing. Just jump right off, and your wings will take over. Give it a try."

Ambrosine drew his wand. "We'll make it easier for you." With a wave and a soft _poof_ , the balcony rail gained a slant like a slide. Because he'd been standing on it, Fergus immediately started to tip down. He skidded to a halt so quickly, his feet flew out from under him and he landed on his back. That made him gasp. Scrambling, he crawled back up the ramp and wrapped both arms around the nearest post on the rail.

"What happened?" Solara asked. "You were doing so well."

Fergus put up one finger. "Yeah, give me a minute. It's not like this comes naturally."

"But it _does,_ Fergus." Solara landed beside him with a pat. She took one of his tiny square wings in her hand and swiveled it up. "Look at this logically with me, baby. Look at yourself. You have such beautiful wings. Why would Mother Nature give you these if they don't do anything?"

He pointed to his floating crown, eyebrows raised.

"Okay, fair enough."

"No," Ambrosine scolded, settling beside them. "The crown is a biological tool that filters your connection with the magical energy field s-so you can breathe."

Fergus closed his eyes. "Dad, while that is extremely fascinating, probably, I'm still not going to do it."

"I thought you said you'd try."

"I did. I let you bring me out here, right? I went all the way up to the edge. That's good enough for today." Fergus reached behind him and grabbed two fistfuls of Ambrosine's vest. His wings chirped together in a way that wasn't quite natural for fairies. "I can't do this. I won't do this. Dad, I _don't_ do _heights_."

"Don't worry. We'll go at your pace, for your comfort level. I won't drop you."

Fergus loosened his fingers. "I hope you're promising that."

The forget-a-cin canister dug into his hip through his satchel pocket.

"Well, this is getting us nowhere." Solara picked Fergus up with both hands and chucked him out into empty space. Ambrosine choked on his own spit.

"Solara! He didn't want to be dropped!"

"That's why I didn't drop him. I threw him. And, you're the only one who said you wouldn't. Simple logic. Duh."

"He's our baby!"

"If he hits the ground, he'll bounce," she insisted as he rushed past her to see. And what he saw was Fergus plummeting fast and hard, his tiny hands stretched upward and half-closed with desperate fear. Making a snap decision, Ambrosine lunged forward.

Solara caught him by the arm and swung him around again. "We tried being patient with him, and that got us nowhere in the course of a year. A whole year, Amby. We need to take drastic measures. He'll be fine."

"But-"

"His instincts will kick in before he hits the ground. If they don't, well, it's a good thing you brought the forget-a-cin then."

Uh.

Hmm.

Well. She _did_ have a point. His dorm apartment wasn't all that high, and Fairies weren't easy to break. In theory, he _would_ bounce upon hitting the clouds below, and while he might get hurt, it wouldn't be dangerously so. He'd heal soon enough. And it wasn't like he was going to remember any of this anyway.

He still shut his eyes so he didn't have to see how close Fergus came to the ground himself. With a swirl of her wand, Solara _poof_ ed down to retrieve their nymph, and _poof_ ed next to Ambrosine again. Fergus' freckled face had turned as pale as the bleached sun.

"You promised!" he screamed the instant he saw Ambrosine. Ambrosine flinched away.

"I'm s-sorry. You were doing so well, I didn't think you needed me."

"You don't break promises! Never, ever, ever! That's the most important thing!"

"You almost had it," Solara assured him, stroking his hair. Fergus smacked her hand away and covered his ears.

"Get away from me! You're stupid and I never want to see you again! Ever! _"_

Ambrosine snapped to attention. "Fergus. Don't speak to your mother that way. 'S-stupid' is not a nice word to call anyone, but especially her. She has your best interests at heart."

Fergus jabbed his pointer finger into Solara's nose. "She threw me off a building! I don't have to respect her, and I don't have to even like her. She gave up the right to have my respect by making bad choices."

Spoken like a true gyne: rebellious and intense. Praxis would not have approved. Solara _tsk tsk_ ed. She pressed her thumb beneath his eye, then stood him on the balcony rail again. "You're being overly emotional about this. Don't cry, luv. Be strong for Mommy. Remember that logic can overcome any fear."

Ambrosine sighed and reached into his pocket. Holding the forget-a-cin canister in front of his son's eyes, he pushed down the top and flashed the light. The pre-bottled magic jumped like a spark from the canister to his forehead. Fergus staggered backwards, rubbing his face with both palms, and went over the edge of the balcony again. His square wings snapped out, desperately beating to no avail. Both parents watched his tumble with lips pressed together hard. Solara nudged Ambrosine with her shoulder.

"See, that wasn't so bad. How many doses do you have left?"

Ambrosine checked the label on the canister. "Eight. And I sh-should be taking notes for class tomorrow."

"Oh, right. Central test theory." Solara pressed her thumb to her teeth, then peered over the railing. She _poof_ ed off again, returning with Fergus kicking and squealing in her arms. His face was flushed from the chill of the air, his pudgy hands planted to his cheeks. He must have been upside-down for too long on that last dive. The lid to his forehead dome was open a thin slit.

 _"I hate you!"_

Ambrosine raised the forget-a-cin canister, and lowered it. Raised it again, and lowered it. "Solara, we should s-stop. He doesn't like this."

She closed the lid on Fergus' head. It latched. "He's fine. I didn't even let him hit the ground."

"Not that. I don't want him to be afraid of us. A-and what if we damage his eyes like this?"

"Your eyes are bad," she pointed out, "so he'll probably inherit that anyway."

"Get _away_ from me!" Fergus sunk his teeth into Solara's arm. She started and let him go. Ambrosine grabbed him before he could fall and pulled him to his chest.

"Ouch. The little crockeroo _bit_ me. On purpose."

"There, Fergus. Shh. I've got you."

Fergus wrapped his arms around his neck, with his mutated, square wings shaking against his back. "Dad, I can't do it. I can't do it. I _hate_ heights. I hate them, I hate them."

Ambrosine shut his eyes. "I know. Fergus? Fergusius, look at me." He turned his son's chin towards him. "You tried. And that means the universe to me."

He put Fergus down and raised the canister again. Fergus squinted blearily, and didn't resist. He continued sobbing, even if he couldn't remember why. He took one look at Solara, and instantly hid himself behind Ambrosine's wings.

"Sh-she's back. Don't let her get me."

Ambrosine glanced at the curtain that led inside. "Solara? Maybe you want t-to-"

She brushed at her face, staring straight ahead. "It doesn't bother me. He needs to learn to fly, Amby. I don't want the wisps to get him." Her fingers tightened around the balcony rail. At the sight of a passing drake flying some ways off, her wings kicked up, then lay flat. "No one is going to catch him unless he wants to be caught."

So it went, until their son went over the rail one time too many, and someone actually _did_ catch him far below.

"Oh no," Ambrosine muttered, leaning over. Solara pulled away, leaving him to squint down at the startled fairy standing on the clouds far below, next to the courtyard well. His tablets were scattered on the ground around him. Fergus was in his arms. The other fairy looked up, wide-eyed, and his lip curled.

"Whimsifinado."

Ambrosine reached behind him for Solara's soft hand. "Thimble. Does Orin know you got outside again?"

That was mean. He knew it when he said it. Drone Fairies were people too, even if they were flaky and unreliable when it came to loyalty and couldn't seem to do much of anything without a gyne there to keep them from walking straight out of the floating clouds and plummeting to Planet Earth far below.

Nope. That was still mean. Good thing no one heard it.

Richard did not acknowledge the comment. Instead, he hugged the shaking nymph to his chest, his expression morphing to a glare. "Did you just throw your son off the balcony?"

"No, I just dropped him." After swallowing, Ambrosine called down, "His instincts were s-supposed to kick in."

"You couldn't have found a smaller ledge?"

"Okay, I s-see your point. Give him back."

"I don't want to. You are clearly a terrible parent. Unsurprising, given your youth."

"What do you know? You're an infertile drone."

Richard reared back his head as though struck. Then he adjusted his wings. "Hmph. The minds of children are enough for me. I plan to devote my life to training the young, since their parents can clearly not be trusted to do so properly."

That was the end of the flying lessons, then. Ambrosine wiped Fergus' memory of the event and checked the dosage label on the forget-a-cin canister. Only one dose left. Good to know.

They gave Fergus some juice in a flower-shaped baby cup and set him down on Ambrosine's bed, which was centered around the dimly-glowing firepit in the middle of the single room. Ambrosine's roommates still hadn't returned, and a swollen, bitter chunk of his brain wondered why. They'd probably gone out to eat somewhere without him. They'd done that more and more frequently over the course of the last year. At first they'd asked him if he'd be offended, and he'd told them no back then, but there were more nights now than there weren't when they'd float through the curtain chatting and laughing and playing with the fancy parasols from their expensive drinks, while he lay blearily in bed with two open textbooks and a chubby nymph chewing on his toes.

The more rational part of his mind understood. He was busier than he used to be now, juggling his advanced classwork with raising Fergus with very little assistance from Solara, who still begrudged their son for the scars his sharp teeth had left across her breasts while he'd been nursing. Fergus, while relatively calm and easy-going, was still in that needy phase of his life and required plenty of attention. It wasn't jazzy to be seen hanging out with the adolescent who had a baby now.

Maybe things would be different between them if there were a ring on his middle finger. Stupid fairy courtship traditions. Stupid Year of Promise. Stupid unexpected heat cycle. Stupid anxiety. He and Solara would have notched each other's wings and been happily married three months ago if it weren't for his stupid anxiety.

"Thanks for coming to s-see us today," he told Solara, picking up her bag from the floor. Her slid her chisels and tablets inside and handed the bag to her. She took it, but didn't hoist it over her shoulder.

"Of course. I love my two favorite drakes."

"I'll s-skim with you back to your room. And bring the posters." And then he'd have to get this floor cleaned up. He could kick the dirt around.

Solara averted her gaze. "Actually… I thought that I might stay the night. If you don't mind it."

Puzzled, he looked at her, and his eyes widened as Solara began to tug down her scarf. Her deep blue curls tumbled free from their bindings, pattering into place behind the apples of her cheeks and the gentle curves of her shoulders. They trailed halfway down her spine, where they swirled into a pool so tangled and frizzy and bunched. The perfect capture of river spray. Ambrosine brought his hand to his mouth. Her hair wasn't entirely blue, and that was the beauty of it. Streaks of natural white ran like comets or yarn from her roots to her tips. He followed the spiraled vortex of it all with his eyes.

Oh, he wasn't in love with that amazing damsel _just_ because of her awe-inspiring hair, no matter what anyone who knew him only from afar might say. He was a therapist taught to see past the surface and view the internal workings of the mind. Solara was a songbird, a writer, a creator. And she had such striking solar system hair, like peering down at Planet Earth from far away. Ambrosine liked it best when she outlined her lips in blue like this too, even though it was expensive. It really brought out the sparkle in her indigo-violet eyes. And by all the water flowing from Kiiloëi, she had a strand of gorgeous hair curling in a delicate 'S' right above her lovely nose that made her look so-

Ambrosine smacked himself in the cheek. Gootchie-goggling later. Conversation-making brain parts try to work now.

Well… maybe a little gootchie-goggling was okay. Solara didn't mind. In fact, the way she stood with her long lashes downcast and her hip turned his way, she was practically encouraging it. Dear King Nuada, how he wanted to run his fingers through that hair again, twirl it around his thumb, plait it, add some beads and ties…

"Oh," he whispered. His hands lifted towards her face, and she didn't stop him from stroking her sweeping cheek. "C-can I…?"

"Get your brush," she said distantly. "You can braid it tonight."

 _"You can braid it tonight."_

Those were the same words she'd said, the night it all happened in the first place…

 _"Oh." The only breathless word. "S-Solara, your hair is…"_

 _Centuries of ear cuffs and warning looks and biding his tongue prevented him from saying the word "beautiful", in addition to "gorgeous", "perfection", and some other noise that was more of a high-pitched squeal than a coherent thought. Ambrosine sank down to the kitchen floor, closing his eyes and just tasting the smell of it._

 _Her hair. Her hair! That snippet of night sky, flecked with white stars, waterfalling over her left shoulder- it was her_ hair _, after all these millennia of hiding in that shimmery purple scarf that had been taunting him even back when he'd had only nineteen lines plugged into his core, rather than the twenty-two floating invisibly above him now. The hair that until this moment had peeked out only when she shifted in the wrong (right) direction. Glory, glory, it did not disappoint. Thick with volume, dripping with layers. Blue, blue, blue, and spinning…_

 _Dear King Nuada had struck him dead. Stitched him up whole again with both his_ Faeumbra _and_ Faelumen _counterparts and sent their reunited core up to Plane 23. With shivering fingers, he stretched out his hand and set it down on the strands that had spilled across his knee._

 _Solara pushed a finger beneath his chin and lifted it, briefly turning his focus away from her hair and back to her eyes. "You like that, don't you, Amby?"_

" _I- I- I-" he stuttered. By dust, his vision was swirling. With his free hand, he clenched the front of his cherry-colored (and currently cherry-smelling) vest in his fist and flapped it at his burning throat. For a moment there, he took himself away from the situation and appreciated every universal puzzle piece that had fallen into place to land an eggheaded therapy and business major, trembling in his dorm's tiny kitchen area, beside the damsel who had the most incredible hair in this quadrant of the known universe._

 _Her bare toes slid up and down his lower leg, urging him on. That was supposed to be scandalous or something, wasn't it? People said that, right? For some reason? Ambrosine swallowed. Hugging her hair against his neck, he managed, "C-can I brush it?"_

 _"Cutiecore, you can do whatever you like." Solara lay on her side then with her blue and black hair falling in loops. Ambrosine, with careful fingers, drew what was on the floor into his lap and stroked his hand along it. Oh, if he'd realized before that being dead would feel this good, he wouldn't have tried so hard to avoid getting drafted for the war. Cruel, perfect, squirmy death. He twirled his fingers through her curls, fascinated with the way they somehow avoided tangling themselves in knots._

 _"I'm not hurting you when I do this, am I?" he asked, glancing up._

 _"Hm? Oh, no, of course not. It's nice." She snuggled closer, lifting her head so it rested on his knee, too. "Get your fix now. I'm thinking of cutting most of it off."_

 _… No._

 _No, no, no, no, no. For a moment he could only stare at her, still hugging a mountain of hair to his chest. His words began to slip out faster- his eyebrows, who knew where they were. "Wh-what? Why would you do that?"_

 _Solara shrugged, her eyes shut. "It almost doesn't all fit up in my scarf anymore and it just gets in the way."_

 _Ambrosine shook his head, not letting go. "You should keep it. I really like it."_

 _"Hm. Should I start letting it down from my scarf when I'm out and about, do you think?"_

 _He pressed a few soft strands to his nose. "Well… Maybe not. I don't want the word to s-spread. When the other drakes see this hair, they might all come to court you, and you could meet s-someone more interesting than me."_

 _"Aw, glitter. You know I'm attracted to your sweet and goopy smile, Ambrosine."_

 _He smiled thinly. At last (but still reluctantly) releasing most of her hair, he lowered a hand towards her and walked his fingers along her arm and across the ties on her kirtle. "And here I thought you took an interest in me for my brains."_

 _"Mm, no," she murmured, leaning up to brush his lips with hers. "Nor your family's fortune either. I'm a simple soul who really doesn't ask for much- What do I care about that? I wouldn't have become an author if I were in this for the money. Hearing your thoughts is enough."_

 _Swallowing his own saliva, Ambrosine pressed into her, holding the kiss there between them like a floating thing. His hands slid beneath her back between her wings, bringing her up and nearer. Solara readjusted herself so she was sitting up, one arm braced behind his neck. Her other palm curved against his cheekbone._

 _"You really like my hair?" she asked after a deep moment, nudging his mouth away with her thumb._

 _"My dust, yes. I haven't s-seen anything come close to its equal before."_

 _She spun her finger through the black curls that snaked behind his ears, and specifically that infamous Whimsifinado family cowlick. "Maybe we should make tonight the night, so you can enjoy touching it while it's still here."_

 _He paused, hands and lips both hovering. "Tonight?"_

 _"Do you really have any objections?" Solara asked, blinking lightly._

 _Ambrosine gave a slight smirk in one corner of his mouth. She pinched her tongue between her teeth and reached up to play with his spiral cowlick some more, and he allowed his eyes to wander once again over that river of dark blue starlight bleeding across the dirty floor. "Just one s-suggestion. This would look jazzed in a triple fishtail."_

 _"Would it?"_

 _"Wouldn't I be the one to know?"_

 _"You're the expert. Get your brush. You can braid it tonight."_

The memory vaporized at his fingertips, taunting him with promises that it would never return. Ambrosine of the present day reached very carefully up and slid a swirl of his own hair behind his pointed ear. He swallowed, only to find his throat dryer than a genie's lamp. No one had ever made him feel special until Solara slipped into his life. Even the Whimsifinado fortune didn't seem to make him a worthy catch in the eyes of damsels. Sure, Ilisa Maddington was a… part of his past, as she was of most drakes' pasts these days. He'd technically been drafted into that event. But who was Ilisa? She wasn't Solara Wurpixiz. She didn't have Solara's bare feet whisking across the floor that perfect autumn day when they danced, her triple fishtail braid flying behind her. She didn't have those imperfect teeth that made her a real person instead of a celebrity fantasy. She didn't have that adorable nose just perfect for landing kisses…

And Ilisa hadn't let him braid her hair. Oh. Ambrosine hadn't braided hair - _anyone's_ hair - since the day he'd told Solara he was pregnant (because granting Fergus braided magic lines so he could breathe didn't really count). Yes… He'd been shaking and sobbing when he confessed those test results to her out beneath the ulk tree grove on campus…

 _When the words left his lips, Solara took a step back, pressing three fingers to her own. Ambrosine's eyes flicked up to meet hers. She didn't have any words for him, but he could read her body posture:_ But it was our very first night of courtship, by fairy tradition we're supposed to stay hands-off for a year, this wasn't supposed to happen. _He let his gaze fall again. His arms, already strangling his thin body, somehow dug deeper until he was a beanstalk in a dirty sweater in the dark. He stayed mute, with his head bowed and wings drooping. Awaited the sentence that would slice across his throat like a sword._

 _She would stay with him. Wouldn't she? She ought to. It was her nymph too, after all. Technically there were no legal obligations. Absolutely there were no legal obligations. Tradition had always been hazy regarding that. Fairies had predictable fertility cycles that offered centuries of (often welcome) inability to conceive, so unexpected pregnancies were almost unheard of. It was expected that the couple would be smart enough to pair up when the drake was safely out of season. He should have known his cycle. He should have taken the time to calculate it. He should have been smarter._

 _Some couples even made the effort to get in contact with their Anti-Fairy and Refracted counterparts to alert them of the plan in advance, to assure themselves that since they were technically responsible for the creation of other lives besides their own children, those other children too would be born into good homes. Or at least they would give their counterparts time to mentally prepare, and perhaps go out on a lunch date together if up until now they had never met. It wasn't uncommon for Fairy couples to decide against having children purely because they didn't trust their Anti-Fairy counterparts to raise the resulting pup in a healthy, stable home. They could always return to school for their godparent licenses if they so desired; godchildren made a fine substitute for the real thing._

 _Fairies lived for hundreds of thousands of years, even a million or more at times, so there was really no rush. Rearing offspring was a pastime of the older and the wealthier. Not two children who got a little too carried away on the first evening of Autumn Break. Not two children still struggling through all that school._

 _He should have remembered his time of fertility was coming on. He should have waited just another two years, and then it would have been over. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't her responsibility. He should have known better. That's what everyone said when "accidents" happened, right? She didn't have to stay. Damsels could choose these things for themselves. They shouldn't have to be tied down. If Mother Nature believed Fairy mothers were necessary for raising young, then it wouldn't be the drakes who got pregnant. Evolution- that's exactly what an Anti-Fairy would say. Those shrieky freaks always had the shrillest voices on that matter._

 _What was he going to tell his dad? Mom would understand him- Mom always understood him. Even if he had a swollen belly, she would hug him all the same. Nettle Whimsifinado was a passionate and fiery dame, whose shapeshifting skills on the saucerbee field knew no equal. Even being blinded by lightning hadn't slowed her down too much, merely given her the opportunity to bow out of her professional sports career with grace and fame. Nettle knew how to have fun. Maybe that's what he saw in Solara too. Was that weird?_

 _"Amby," she managed to find in her at last. Raising her tired, rubbed-raw palm to his cheek, Solara lifted his face. "Amby, look at me."_

 _"I can't," he mumbled back with his eyes still shut._

 _She was suddenly too young and too scared for this. He could feel that energy thrumming through her fingertips. She bowed her head. "Hey. Listen. Ambrosine, hey. I won't pretend… that this isn't hard for me. I won't pretend I'm not disappointed. I won't pretend that I'd wish for it to be undone if I had the choice. I won't pretend any of that. I don't know if I can make myself love a baby I never wanted."_

 _"I'm s-s-sorry… It's all my fault." He touched his fingertips against his stomach. It was only just starting to grow round, so faint right there that it would be easy to miss if you didn't know how scrawny his body usually was. Ambrosine had noticed the symptoms before the actual bump, his magic turning into little more than static shocks, and the presence of oozing purple jelly inside his head. Like something else was feeding off his power. He'd waited until he was sure. He'd waited until he didn't think he could cry anymore._

 _Solara swept his face up in both hands. When she squeezed inward, it forced his eyelids to flutter shut. "No. We started this together, and I'm going to try and help you even when it's hard."_

 _"You're never there. You never h-have been."_

 _"I… said I'd try. You know it's hard, with the jobs I work and my dad so sick. But I'm going to try. I'll make time to visit you."_

 _He held her wrists as the sniffles began. "I know what will make you s-stay… I'll buy you that penthouse s-suite in Faeheim you've always wanted. I'll visit you every morning three days a week, every s-single week. I don't care what time my shift will start. I'll be there."_

 _Solara nodded, her gaze wandering to the ulk trees. "I'd like that. I'll come to see you too. I won't miss a single month, for the rest of our lives. I'll be there. Ambrosine, you…"_

 _She stopped, so he cracked open his eyelids. Solara stared at him, the words lost in her throat. Then she pulled him in. Her hands moved like it was natural. There she was, wrapping her arms behind his neck and choking when she spoke._

 _"I love you."_

 _Ambrosine stood there, his wings beating at his back but not lifting him off the ground. He raised his hands like hers, but didn't know where to place them. "W-what? Still? After I decided to get pregnant, for s-some reason?"_

 _"I love that about you. I love the way you sing when you comb your hair on the balcony. I love how well you can draw in the dust with a stick. I love the shy way you smile when you step aside to let a damsel pass you in the hallway while you bob your head and hug your worktablets to your chest. I love that you don't mind if you weren't my first. You're not the first drake I ever kissed. You're not the first drake who asked if he could court me. You're not even the first drake I ever…" She squeezed her eyelids shut. "But- but you can be the last one. You're the only one I've ever trusted this much. I love you. It was never lust to you, when you thought my hair was pretty. You thought it was a gift of trust, and that's how I knew you were the one. You're the one I want to stay with, Amby. We'll make it through this together. Even when it's hard, even when we're scared stiff."_

 _"You know we can't-"_

 _"This will work."_

 _"But my dad-"_

 _"-never has to know until Plane 23."_

 _The careful, tiny kiss tasted like their first night all over again. The wetness leaked from his eyes. It curled down his cheeks and dripped onto his scarf. Ambrosine pressed the heel of his hand to his mouth and let himself cry on her, and let her cry on him, and they were supposed to be okay forever then._

Which they were. Okay forever. He'd made sure of that.

Solara settled on the floor between the balcony curtain and the nearest bed, tucking her legs underneath her. Ambrosine pulled his box of pins and ties out from the corner, and knelt behind her with the brush. Her hair parted into three sections as easily as boiled butter. Before going on, he held his hands locked together in front of her stomach, and kissed the deepest part of her cheek. "I love it when you s-spend your weekends on us."

"Yes," she murmured. "I try. There are some days when I can't even believe I actually have a son. Sometimes it's hard to remember. I could never walk out on you forever, Ambrosine, but sometimes the stress gets to even me."

"You? S-stressed? No." Ambrosine brushed her hair into three distinct sections and started to sing under his breath. _"And if you were a hummingbird, then you would understand. It's fine if you don't know the words, but s-sing them if you can…"_ After a few verses, he commented,"You know, you always s-said you wanted a kid of our own one day."

"It's been longer than one day."

His laughter spurted, but she cut him off.

"What did you take from me, Ambrosine?"

Ambrosine shut his mouth. "What?"

"The forget-a-cin." Solara turned her head. "I know you took something earlier. What was it?"

He looked unhappily at the two lengths of hair drooping from his hands; her first braid was only half-completed. They were still gorgeous and desirable, of course. Solara always took advantage of his fascination with touching her hair to share her deepest feelings with him. Normally he was okay with that, but realizing she'd offered them today in order to lure him into a conversational trap about her memories made the idea of braids lose some of its luster.

"It… it wasn't really anything important."

"It was important enough to steal away from me."

He shifted his wings. "You asked Fergus to bring you your wand, and when you didn't, you s-started to get impatient."

"'You, you, you,'" Solara muttered. Without turning her head, she brought her fist to her chin and flared her nostrils as she sighed. "I really hate that I love you sometimes, Amby. You're adorable, and you've never spoken an unkind word to me or touched me without permission. At least, not that I remember. And I know it's insensitive of me to say, but dealing with the cycle of your anxiety and lashing out is… It's difficult for me sometimes."

Ambrosine completed the first of the three braids quietly, then moved on to a new section of her hair. "I'm s-sorry."

Solara placed her palms to the floor and shifted her weight. "I'll support you wholeheartedly the moment your coping mechanisms become less extreme, but you can't punish me like this, Amby. I love you, but it isn't right and I don't know how much longer I can be a part of it. You can't just rearrange someone's brain as a way to deal with your problems."

"Technically I'm negatively reinforcing you, not punishing," he muttered under his lines.

Her hand reached over her shoulder and found his. "I think I liked it best when we weren't seeing each other so much. Do I make you anxious? Is that what's wrong?"

"It's not you, 'Lara." Ambrosine pinched his tongue between his lips, concentrating on the next twist of hair. The first one didn't want to stay tight. He pinned it up with a pink flower from his decoration box, just for now. "Classes are just hard, and I've been taking care of Fergus mostly by myself for so long. And of course, now there's a war s-starting up on the other side of Fairy World…"

Solara said nothing, and Ambrosine tilted his head. "Would you still love me if you'd known about my anxiety issues from the s-start?"

"You asked me to try," she whispered. "So I'm trying. I really am. After all, I have my anxieties and past traumas too. You've always been respectful and patient with me. I think you have. But this isn't always easy, Amby. We need to find a compromise. It isn't… fair."

No. Nothing was. But at least they had each other. She loved his singing, he loved her hair. They were okay. Okay forever now.

"I'm s-sorry. I won't use the forget-a-cin on you again."

"And that's a promise?"

"Um- I-"

"Oh, good," came Fergus' small voice out of nowhere. "We get room service now."

Ambrosine and Solara both jumped at the shoulders, wings skipping out. Between her hair and their conversation (Well, mostly her hair), Ambrosine hadn't been paying any attention whatsoever to their surroundings. But upon recognizing the new aura that had just ducked beneath the front curtain and into the room, he dropped Solara's partial braids and covered his mouth with his hands.

What was _he_ doing here? He hadn't been invited. Not tonight. Not to show up unannounced. Ambrosine had already made a point of bringing his father in to see his dorm that morning, specifically to deter him from popping by later. He'd worked so hard, gotten the place so clean, hidden all the signs… he couldn't lose Fergus any more than he could lose Solara.

How was this fair? There hadn't been any warning. He'd actually put forth effort into preventing an encounter between his father and son. It was all for nothing now? In the blink of an eye? In the middle of a conversation?

Praxis Whimsifinado always dressed all in black. The exception to this style was the dark green leprechaun hat perched between his head and his floating crown. Tufts of red hair swirled out from beneath the brim, or drooped in a mustache beneath his nose. He always hovered, never walked. Walking was for poor people. In his left hand, he cradled one of those expensive golden drinks with the little paper parasols and frozen chunks of fruit in place of ice cubes. Ambrosia. His favorite, and the drink he'd named his middle child after.

Ambrosine watched, petrified, as at the squeak of Fergus' voice, Praxis turned his head. And almost fell out of the air. Because, well, there was a nymph on his son's bed, of course with bright eyes and a spiral cowlick too similar to his own for the older drake to simply ignore him and float away.

And even though they were as light as salt, that very same nymph undeniably had the dozens of facial freckles that marked him as a gyne.

No… no…

Ambrosine felt for his satchel and clenched his hand. One dose left. He couldn't waste it. It had to be exact. He had to be sure.

"I want more juice," Fergus said, holding out his baby cup. "Shaken. Not stirred. That's what my dad says."

"What in the name of dust?" Praxis muttered, moving towards him.

Instantly Ambrosine launched himself out of the shadows behind the bed, _over_ Fergus and the blankets, and barred the way with outstretched arms. "Father! H-hi. I w- I w- I w-wasn't expecting you to come b-b-back here again t-tonight. Again. We could have met up for s-supper somewhere. My treat."

"The plan was to bid good-bye to my most favored son before I leave him for the semester." The older fairy flicked his eyes past his shoulder. His lips lifted from his teeth just enough for Ambrosine to see the pink of his tongue pressed against their backs. "Exactly whose nymph is that?"

Ambrosine's eyelids flickered. Cold sweat gathered between his wings. A jittering lump bounced in his throat. _Please, oh please be too distracted to notice Solara._ He looked up again, his teeth fastened in his lower lip for a second more. "Not… I… didn't…"

"Where do your eyes go when you're having a conversation with your father?"

Appropriately, Ambrosine cast them to the floor. "Father, I-"

"And where do your feet go?"

His toes were pointed inward, feet arched. They were always arched when he was tense. Ambrosine straightened first one, then the other.

"And where should you put your hands?"

Clasped in front of his waist. Stiffly, Ambrosine bowed, taking care to spread his wings out to the sides in the proper way for a young bureaucrat such as himself when addressing a drake of even higher rank. Upon rising, he kept his face absolutely straight.

"I- I realize that I'm s-speaking out of turn, Esteemed Father, but this is important. It isn't what you assume, s-sir. He's my fifth interest-studies s-semester project for my children's therapy class. I'm t-taking care of him until the end of t-t-term."

"Wait, what?" said the nymph, unimpressed.

"Fergus, shut up," Ambrosine muttered.

"'It isn't what you assume, _s-sir_ ,'" Fergus repeated in a mocking tone.

Praxis squeezed his temples, and sighed. Gently, holding his hand low, he shook his golden drink so the fruit chunks inside rattled against the glass. "Where did I go wrong? Ambrosine, Ambrosine, you realize I had you betrothed to another damsel millennia ago. Kataleen was so good for you. It should have been so easy. I never had to go through this with your sisters. They did precisely what they were taught, and look at them now. Both married to successful drakes of high standing, and as happy and well-off in life as they could expect to be. King Nuada, smite me now…" He rubbed his face again. "Ambrosine. What is the Whimsifinado family creed?"

 _"Páistí refracta f-foirfe daoine._ 'Oldest s-sons don't make mistakes.'"

"Ambrosine."

Hesitantly, he lifted his gaze. "Y-yes, Father?"

Praxis raised both eyebrows. One hand remained behind his back, relaxed and not concerning, while the other continued to rattle the ambrosia glass. The heavy gingertie wand glinted in his sheath. "Are you afraid of me?"

"I- I- I respect you, s-s-sir."

"Do you? And is there anything you want to tell me?"

"N-no, sir… Yes. No… No, sir. A-actually. Actually. Y-yes. Actually th-there is. Forget you, old man!" Ambrosine flashed his hand towards the satchel at his waist. He managed to get the forget-a-cin canister out, but Praxis knocked it away across the floor before he had the chance to do anything with it. Fergus yelped and covered his ears. Solara, _thank the stars_ , stayed hidden behind the bed- she was shaking and afraid, and that might save her. Ambrosine sprang back- too slowly. The hand slapped towards him before he could _poof_ away. Praxis slammed the younger drake into the wall by the neck and held him pinned.

"My dust. So _this_ is why you were wearing those ridiculously loose sweaters when you came home for that one weekend. Although they weren't quite so loose on you, were they? Only there to cover up your pregnant tummy? Didn't want to be caught in paternity wear?"

Ambrosine closed his eyes. The rough cloudstone scraped across his cheek, threatening to draw blood. "I never intended to d-disguise it, Father. If you didn't notice any s-signs, that was just a coincidence."

"Did you think you could hide him from me forever?"

"I love her."

Fingers clenched. "Don't tell me this is about Solara. I thought I made my standing on this issue quite clear. You know the hole she crawled out of. Whimsifinado drakes don't get pregnant from no-status damsels like her."

Ambrosine grasped his wrist in his hand. "I love her. S-Solara is my everything. She loves me too. Because of who I am, not because of my s-s-status. She's patient and talented and kind and-"

"She's not good enough for you."

"W-we were beginning the Year of Promise. Th-that's where Fergus came from. It was our first night of official courtship. You of all people should know this is how our s-subspecies does these things. 'A year and a day.' Lughnasa tradition. I wasn't planning to get pregnant from it. It just sort of h-happened."

Praxis shook him by the collar. Ambrosine's head bashed twice against the wall, a squeak leaping from his mouth each time. "I didn't mean his general existence is deserving of punishment, you brownie-brain. Oh, why me? It's not my business if you wanted to go tumble about in the honeywheat fields with some doe-eyed damsel you plucked out of the mucky streets. I meant his freckles. You gave me a grandson with dustforsaken _freckles_. _"_

"You guys are messed up," Fergus said. He stuck his thumb in his mouth.

Praxis pulled his hand away from Ambrosine's neck and pointed towards the bed. "Do you see those blemishes upon his face? Can't you feel the pressure tingles in the air? He's a gyne. He'll only cause you trouble."

Ambrosine didn't draw his cheek from the wall. "H-he doesn't mean any harm. He's just a little s-sarcastic."

"Gynes always kill their parents, and any other elders in their family they can get their dirty hands on. Don't you know anything?" Praxis switched his drink to his left hand. Before he sipped it, he gave his mustache a simple stroke. "I'm only trying to protect you."

"He's my baby." Where had that forget-a-cin container gone? Ambrosine scanned the floor, and heard his father scoff.

"He's a menace. A bloodthirsty monster. I thought they taught you such things in Spellementary School these days. You should have drowned him instead of weaving lines into his core. In fact, I could drown him right now. He's still a nymph. Immortality won't kick in until age five. It won't be hard. I doubt he can even fly."

"You won't touch him," Ambrosine insisted. It took every fleck of concentration to keep his voice level, and it was rattling his wings at the knobs. Again, he took up position between his father and his son. His wingbeats staggered. His eyes slipped to the floor, but his hands tightened. "He's s-still under the age of two. Therefore, True Love Clause applies. You phys- You physically can't take him away from me. That's the rule. There's a shield- a pink, glowing shield…"

Praxis sighed. He let go of his mustache, and pressed his thumb to the center of Ambrosine's forehead. The lid to his forehead dome unlatched with a soft pop. Praxis then took his hair in one fist and pulled it open the rest of the way. Without an ounce of hesitation, he splashed his entire drink inside his son's head.

Ambrosine's core reacted instantly to the impact of sugary frozen liquid. His fingers closed over empty air instead of his father's blazer. Ambrosine crashed onto his side, then flopped onto his back. His lines fritzed. His fingers responded to jerky commands that weren't his own. Upside-down and immobilized, all he had the power to do was lie there as his father grabbed Fergus by the arm. Fergus cried out, like True Love Clause didn't exist at all. Solara just watched them walk past her without doing anything. She made eye-contact with his father, and looked away. She clutched her shoulders in her hands.

"Stop," Ambrosine wheezed.

"Uh, Dad?" Fergus reached out his hand over Praxis' sharp shoulder. "Hey, Dad?"

"'Lara… please…"

Ignoring them both, Praxis drifted over to the balcony curtain. He swished away beneath it and was gone. Ambrosine struggled to crane his neck.

"S-Solara?"

It took a moment before she moved. Then she stood, brushed off her skirts, walked over, and knelt beside him again. She held her wrist in her hand.

"'Lara, he- My dad has Fergus. S-stop him. He'll kill him."

"… Maybe this is for the best."

Ambrosine slid his eyes left and right across her face, trying to control some of the spasms of his body. He squirmed his shoulders. "What? H-how can you s-say that? He's our son."

"He's always been more your son than mine," she said, quietly. "I'm not really better than Praxis. I'm the one who threw him off the roof." She tucked her feet beneath her cloudy skirt until only her toes poked out from beneath. Her fingers brushed across her woven hair. "Ambrosine, he _is_ a gyne. The freckles prove that. Your dad had a point. Gynes get territorial once they grow up. The only language they really understand is that of physical strength. Sooner or later, he's going to challenge you for dominance." Her fingers wrapped around his forearm and gently squeezed. "And I don't want to lose you like that."

"How can you even say that?" Ambrosine repeated. Every word fell dully to the ground. He struggled to sit up, but wrenching pain tore him down again. His head thunked. Sugar filled his bloodstream. Was this what it was like, injecting drugs inside your head? He'd never taken drugs _ex vi et animo_ before. No one had invented anything they could prove would help his anxiety, so he'd never been tempted to dump things in his forehead chamber. Why was it so hard to drink magic now? It shouldn't be this hard. Should it be this hard? Where was the energy field? Was that still a thing?

"There will be drones," Solara muttered. "Gyne pheromones bring them in like fleas. They eat your food and don't look you in the eyes and don't respect you at all. I can't leave you to raise them on your own after Fergus gets bored of caring for them. You know he will. He gets bored with everything. But I can't stay with you either."

Ambrosine reached for her face. His hand touched her shoulder. "No. There's nothing wrong… with drones. They just s-see the world differently than we do… Doesn't make them stupid. Just diff'rent. We learn this i-in my classes. It's like one of those cultural differences… you like to write about so much. Solara?"

She looked away, the sob fluttering on her lips. "I c-can't! I don't know how to take care of drones. At least with Fergus, I'm his mother. He would never come onto his own mother." She took her two braids in her fists. "Amby, I _can't_. I don't want strange drakes crawling around our home. I don't feel safe like that. I wanted… a home. I need a place where I can be alone, where I can be myself, w-where I can feel like I'm protected and safe, and I'm s-scared."

"'Lara, you have to stop him. Praxis. He's going to kill Fergus. S-stop him."

"I can't- I'm scared- Your father s-scares me. We can have a new nymph, Amby. A kabouter instead of a gyne. Maybe a damsel, with beautiful blue hair you can braid every day. Later, when… when we're ready to be parents."

The choke- it- blocked out all his other thoughts. Were there other thoughts? He tried to flop over. "What? I sh-should have known I couldn't trust you to be on my side! You don't really love me, and now you're going to say we should s-split up."

Solara tried to touch his shoulder, but he batted her away. "Amby, please. Please! I don't want to split forever. I love you. But I agree with you. A break would be good for us. We're young, we can't handle this, your family hates me-"

He didn't stay to hear it. It took straining wingbeats, but Fairies were notoriously quick healers. Even with a slushy drink screaming inside of his head, Ambrosine managed to pick his way across the room. It helped to lean against the wall. Sure enough, Praxis had left the balcony. Where? Down by the courtyard well. With Fergus. Yes. He was there, holding the fighting baby gnawing on his arm. How did he get down there? Solara hadn't stopped him. Why didn't she stop them? That wasn't right. What time was it? Weren't there people around? Eating dinner. He had sugar water in his head. He shouldn't jump. Trying to fly in this condition would just be stupid.

Abandoning his son to die would be stupider.

Ambrosine held his hands parallel to his cheeks, palms facing, and brought them down near his chest like falling axes. Focus. Why? No. Fergus. Right. Ambrosine clenched his wand shaft in the soft bends of his fingers. Using magic while so dizzy was _probably_ dangerous, but he needed to know he could stand up to Praxis. _Poof_ ing his scarlet vest off his body was something small. It was supposed to rematerialize on his bed, but it didn't even make it as far as the curtain before it _poof_ ed from dust molecules into its physical form again, and fell to the floor.

His white undershirt was still too fancy. The sleeves were long, the fabric warm, soft, and sticky against his sweaty skin. The cuffs were puffy like flower petals. It would have to do. Fergus was down there, and Ambrosine couldn't spend all day making himself look pretty. Heaving himself over the side of the balcony, he tumbled and plunged.

"Amby!"

Reorienting himself with a spiral was a challenge, but repeating his son's name in his head helped him focus. Ambrosine blinked through the influence of sugar. His father and his son were still there at the well, engaged in a small scuffle of hand and teeth. Use the wand. Didn't have a wand. Wait. Did have a wand. Stretching it out, Ambrosine gave it a wave to _poof_ Fergus a short distance away.

Praxis _poof_ ed him right back. Baby near his feet. Son. A thin trail of cloudy puffs and glittering dust hung behind in the air.

"Father," he puffed, coming in for a terrible landing. His feet skidded. Ambrosine wiped his eyes. He stumbled forward, waving his wand again. He fired a blast of blue lightning and a curl of hot pink flames. Then another lightning shock for good measure. Praxis used his gingertie wand to deflect that last blow onto Fergus, who cried out where he lay crumpled against the well, hands pinned to his ears. Don't hit Fergus. Don't hit Fergus.

As Ambrosine staggered closer, Praxis scooped Fergus in his arms and cradled him to his chest. He turned his back, like he didn't even care about the approaching threat.

Don't hit Fergus. Don't hit Fergus.

Ambrosine stopped a few wingspans away. "Please. Daddy? F-for me?"

"He can't even fly," Praxis murmured, watching the nymph chew on his arm again. "Isn't that pathetic, speck? He's a year old, and he can't even fly. What have you been doing to him all this time? Messing with his dopamine levels so he'll never want to leave you?"

Didn't he know? That if Fergus was out of the picture, Ambrosine would have no reason to withhold his wand blasts? Baby. Good baby. Save baby. He raised his wand.

Grabbing his own wand, Praxis whipped around and made a sideways cut through the air. A blast of searing yellow flung Ambrosine backwards, knocking him over. He braced himself for the second one with his arm as he stood up again. It burned a gash in his sleeve.

"S-s-stop it. Stop. Father, why are you d-doing this? He's my s-son."

Praxis wrapped his hand around the back of Fergus' neck and stretched him, heavy and squirming though he was, out above the deep pit of the well. "Born out of wedlock. Mutated by _her_ genes. Freckles of a terror. A blemish in the Whimsifinado line."

"I don't care!" Ambrosine lashed another pink burst in his direction. Praxis took it without recoiling. "Taste my pheromones! _I love her!"_ Another blast, this one spiked with pink and combined with a lurching step forward. "And I love him!"

Praxis shot the wand straight out of his hand with a blue dart. It left a searing black mark in Ambrosine's right palm. He swayed to one side, fighting… the urge… to crumple… to… his… dustforsaken knees…

Stupid. Baby.

"Dad," he whispered, bowing his head. "If I'd been born with f-freckles, would you have drowned me too?"

Instead of using the McKinley grip to fire a sharp beam of energy, Praxis adjusted his hand around his wand. He painted a swirling pattern in the air, and shackles of purple energy wrapped around Ambrosine's ankles and wrists. "Of course. In the blink of an eye. Gynes are creatures of chaos. Whimsifinados value order. Oldest sons don't make mistakes."

Ambrosine's response was wordless. Choking. Didn't stop Praxis from dropping Fergus down the well like a stray hair plucked from a sleeve. Just like that. He floated away in the opposite direction from the dorm, spinning his sparking wand through his fingertips as daintily as a paper parasol in an expensive drink.

No. Baby.

Heaving himself back to his feet, Ambrosine lunged after him. The energy chains clenched against his wrists. His skin strained until it squeezed his bones. He _screamed_ , and he never raised his voice for anything. Not until today. Twisting backwards, Ambrosine dug in his heels and yanked with all he had.

And old man Praxis continued floating off. Sheathed his wand and everything. Didn't flinch away, even when his son collapsed in the clouds behind him.

"Daddy? Please? F-for me?"

"I didn't kill him," Praxis said over his shoulder. He provided no further explanation, nothing about whether he took responsibility for this or whether he was allowing Ambrosine to make a choice that wasn't really a choice. He adjusted the green top hat pinned beneath his crown. "I'll cancel your betrothal to Kataleen, then. Don't come to any more family reunions. You have the family cowlick, but you've lost out on the right to call yourself a Whimsifinado. Your siblings will not be permitted to speak with you again." And then he disappeared in a whoosh of dust.

Ambrosine snatched up his fallen wand. He was shaking so hard that it fell out of his hand. It took two more tries to pick it up and hold it steady. He had to force the transmitting tip underneath each shackle, right up against his skin, and cried out as lightning shot up his arms. Bright red blisters spread like spiderwebs across his hands. He wouldn't be surprised if that damaged the nerves in his wrists for life. Well, maybe not. Magic wasn't supposed to damage Fairies forever. Magic wounds could heal in moments. But cracked skulls from falls didn't.

The chains burst into firecrackers. He flung his wand away. Sharpness stabbed his wrists. Didn't matter. Not now. On his feet, he swerved and pinwheeled. Catching his footing for just one perfect second, he sprinted for the well as fast as his floppy body could. He dove in headfirst.

Baby?

First there was stone. Smooth bricks of it, layer upon layer, lining his sides and blocking out his vision. Then the walls lapsed away, and Ambrosine broke into white clouds. He took a mouthful of water vapor, frozen crystals thawing back behind his uvula. One of his left front teeth stung with cold to the gums. He shook his head, wings still pinned to his sides. Fergus was here. Somewhere. Fergus was falling. At least if he hit, he would bounce. Fairies were tough to break. It was okay? It was okay.

Baby was nowhere. Somehow.

In his mind's eye, Ambrosine could imagine him. There was Fergus, plunging up ahead. His hands flattened to his cheeks, his eyes wild and searching as he flipped over and over in the cloudy sky. Useless square wings. Ambrosine kicked his feet, flailing at the air.

"Fly, Fergus!" he sputtered.

 _"No!"_

"Please!"

 _"I can't!"_

Ambrosine squeezed his eyes shut. "I can't baby you your entire life. You need to figure out how to be s-self-sufficient."

 _"I was self-sufficient! I was happy all by myself until you threw me off the roof!"_

The clouds broke away. The open sky gleamed with purple. There was another layer of clouds below them, part of the hillscape, and at least that would prevent Fergus from falling out of this plane of existence and into another.

But where was baby?

There. Ahead. Just like he'd imagined.

Keep diving.

Sharper.

Swerving.

Beating.

Faster.

Can't get underneath him.

Right there.

Hand missed.

So close.

Almost-

"Fergus, please! _Fly!"_

But he couldn't. He hadn't learned how.

Ambrosine plowed into solid cloud at an angle, his arms outstretched, and slid to a halt. Fergus hit cloud with a noise like a squeak and bounced down the hill, where he finally landed in the vapor with a plop. "Ooooh," Ambrosine mumbled, crawling over and picking him up. "Um. J-just to clarify, your mother did s-say that because you're a baby, you won't remember the events of today, even without forget-a-cin, right?"

Baby held his head in one hand, his eyes squeezed shut. "Wow, _thanks_ , Dad. Now I'm mutated, I have freckles, Granddad hates me, and I probably have brain damage. What's next? Mommy decides to ditch us and I get infected with a life-changing disease?"

He could talk. Thank the stars he could talk like a living person who hadn't died. Fergus spat a bloody tooth onto the ground and wrinkled his nose.

"Heh. Look at that. S-sweet thing. Walk it off, kiddo. It's okay. You're okay. Going to be okay forever now." Ambrosine kissed his head and put him down again. His own chest and limbs were shaking, but it wouldn't do to let Fergus pick up his anxiety. Stay calm. Don't act afraid.

He pushed his hand against his eye, fingers clenching his hair, and found himself laughing at the thought. "Oh my s-stars. It's okay. You'll be fine. It wasn't natural for you to be born with a mouthful of those chompers anyway. I'm not s-sure even the Tooth Fairy will take it. If you can speak, you'll be fine. We're okay. Okay forever now. And now we've learned a lesson about why we sh-should never jump out of the clouds in the future, I hope."

"Yeah," Fergus muttered. "Now I know I can survive."

"That's not a good lesson."

"I can't feel my legs," Fergus groaned, rising to his wings. It was a strange way to float, with his wings spinning in rapid circles instead of sweeping back and forth. Ambrosine lifted his eyebrows as his son massaged his lumpy feet with one hand, while the other arm dangled like a limp worm at his side. Then Fergus looked up. "What?"

"Um. Look down."

The nymph didn't, but what his wings were doing slowly dawned on him anyway. His brows scrunched together, and his mouth twisted in a silent shriek of rage. But, the expression promptly disappeared. He folded his arms, awkwardly since one didn't seem inclined to function well, then crossed one leg over the other as his wings continued to churn behind him. "Feh. I deserve this."

"Good boy. But ins-s-tead of taking the opportunity to test out your newfound abilities, let's get you down to bed."

"Carry me."

"Fine. No," he said, stopping his son from burrowing into the stomach pouch beneath his shirt. "You're too big." He scooped Fergus up groom style instead and, not flying aimlessly around _too_ much, brought him back up to the proper dorm.

Solara hovered a few inches above the balcony, rubbing her shoulder. She offered up an obviously-fake smile when he touched down beside her. "Well. Howdy, partner. You saved him."

Ambrosine looked at her, and said nothing. He looked at her. And he said nothing. He walked straight past her and set Fergus down on his bed. Fergus risked a peek at his face, then burrowed under the blankets and covered his ears.

"I'm glad," Solara added, floating inside after him.

 _ **"** **Why?** **"**_

Solara's wings skipped a few beats. She backed away, reaching for the balcony curtain. The fabric twisted in her hands. "Because- Because I know how much he matters to you. Amby, I know I'm scared. I know I said some terrible things about gynes and drones. I-it's not that I hate drones, it's just that I don't, um, know how to communicate with them, or what to say to them, or how to relate to them in any way, that's all. I just know what they're like, and I don't know if I trust or would be okay having them around me all the time if they're only there to serve _him_ - _"_

" **Not**. **That**." He hadn't meant to spit the words, but they blurred the same way as his tears. "I meant, about True Love Clause."

"Right."

Ambrosine turned on his heels and marched towards her. Solara backed away again, this time out onto the balcony. Her hands pressed into her cheeks. He followed, pointer finger near her nose, until her hips bumped up against the railing. "Why was Praxis able to take Fergus like that? You were s-standing right there. True Love Clause should have kicked in, with its glowing pink shield and everything. I've s-seen it before. It keeps Fergus from being coaxed off by s-strangers when we're in the mess hall. We discuss these things in my classes. It's one of the natural magical laws: No one can interfere with true love. Parents are supposed to love their children. Tiny babies can't be kidnapped, only given up willingly. And it's like that for Fergus when he's next to me. Why not when he's with you?"

Solara slid along the railing, away from his accusing finger, her bare feet quiet on stone. "W-well. You know I never wanted him. And you know what he did to my breasts with those nasty teeth."

"That's not an excuse. You don't have to like him, but…" He tilted his head. His shoulders sagged. The finger came down. "You really hate him that much? He's our s-son, 'Lara. How can you say you truly love me, when you hate him s-so much?"

"I don't hate him," she whispered. "I really don't. And I would never leave you forever. I just think we need a break. We need time to grow up. I'm just-"

"-scared. S-scared of your future. Scared of your past. Scared of drakes. I know." Ambrosine took out the forget-a-cin canister, and looked at the label. Then at her. "I also know I only have one dose of this left."

Her eyes widened when he took that first staggering step towards her. "Don't you dare."

He took another. She took one away. Her hands clenched her skirts. Her eyes shifted left and right.

"Amby, please. I don't want to fight you. You're not thinking. What about Fergus? H-he's going to be traumatized for the rest of his life because of today. Shouldn't you save it for him? What are you doing?"

In two more steps, Ambrosine grabbed a fistful of Solara's hair and yanked her towards him. His jittering fingers could barely keep their grip on the forget-a-cin at all. He pressed the canister into her temple, pushing it deeper and deeper until the skin around it turned from fleshy pink to white. Salty blood and bitter magic swirled in his spit. "I'm s-s-sorry. This is wrong, this is so wrong, but I c-can't lose you. I can't. Please don't be mad. P-please don't be mad. Don't hate me. I love you."

Solara stared up at him, mute and without tears. Ambrosine stared back down at her. His teeth chattered like shaking wings. His wings shook like chattering teeth. Her hair lay still and dull in his hand.

In slow motion, Ambrosine lowered the forget-a-cin from her head. He released her sloppy braid. It fluttered down. "No. I can't. I p-promised I wouldn't use this on you again. I promised. But it's s-so hard, 'Lara. S-Solara, please. I love you. I love you more than anything, but we'll f-fight again one day, and you'll leave me f-f-forever." He touched his cheek. All four wings jittered against his back. "I c-can't lose you too. I can't."

"I don't want this, but-"

"My D-Daddy's gone. My mother's dead. All I have is Fergus, and you. Please don't make me do this by mys-s-self."

She swallowed. Her hand moved up to the place where he had held the canister. She took her hair between her fingers and clenched it tight. "Amby, I'm sorry. I love you - the good you - but this _isn't working_ , and it's not fair. Please." Her voice left spiderwebbing cracks across the word. "Please let me go."

"I can't do that."

"Please, Amby. I think it would be for the best if we just-"

"I know what will make you stay." Before she could grab his hand, Ambrosine shoved the canister against his own temple and blasted it. He heard Solara screech his name before his eyes rolled back in his head. His arm went over the railing, his knees were falling, and the only thing left to see was white.

… So, why was he in the hospital?

And why wasn't he the one in the bed?

Ambrosine blinked several times as, puff by puff, his vision sprinkled back into place. Bed? He wasn't in bed. Hospital? Yes. The tang of citrus stung his nostrils and the roof of his mouth.

Where, though? He knelt beside the bed, head bowed and hands clasped on the rumpled sheets. They were clean and very white. His own son, the one he gave birth to, lay in the bed with a stack of pillow behind him. Quietly, daintily, he picked his way through a tray of hotcakes in his lap. No syrup. No butter. Just hotcakes with a scrap of bacon on the side. One of his arms had been bandaged up. It lay in a weird sort of fabric pouch at his side. He could only eat with one hand.

Did he have a name? Ambrosine had probably given him a name. That's what you did with babies, mostly.

He had a son. Baby was in bed. Good baby.

It was Fergus.

"Fergus," he mumbled, unable to tear his eyes away from the injured arm. He pushed his fingers through his hair. "What… Where… We're in the hospital? Are we still at the Academy? What's this town called again? Prudoc? Who did this to you?"

Fergus looked over at him, then rolled his eyes. "Your dad dropped me down the well. So. That happened. I think he was trying to drown me."

"Dad did this?" Ambrosine studied the hospital room. It was large, with eight thin beds lined up in it. Nurses and technicians fluttered about, asking questions and handing colored blocks to young patients in the beds. Very medical, very comforting. Organized. Good order.

He saw Solara stiffly leaning against the wall, arms folded and purple scarf firmly wrapped around her hair so not a lock of blue showed through. Ambrosine lifted a brow in her direction for confirmation to Fergus' report. She met his gaze and nodded, very slowly.

"Oh, yeah. Dad did this."

Ambrosine pushed himself into a standing position. Dear dust, he was tired straight down to his stinging bones. What… happened? How long was he out? Why didn't he remember how he got here?

Shaking those questions off, Ambrosine focused on the immediate situation, and stretched out for the injured Fergus. Though his son yelped and Solara had to grab the tray of spilling food, he dragged the kid against him and squeezed him hard around the middle. "Well, I've got you now, Fergusius. You're so _good_. Okay forever now. You can cry all you want. Granddad Praxis isn't going to hurt you anymore. I don't care if you're a kabouter or a gyne or a drone or a Yugopotamian. You're mine, and I will always love you." He wrapped a spiral of black hair behind the nymph's little ear. "Beautiful… You're never going to try to kill your daddy, are you? Sweet drake. Nice drake. Good baby."

"Uggghhh." Fergus leaned over backwards, his one good arm dangling and a bit of syrupy pancake clenched in his fist. "Dad, you're acting like an emotional wreck in front of the jazzy kids again."

"Hee hee. I'm glad you humor me so." Ambrosine lifted him up and kissed his forehead. Again. Again.

"Your stutter's gone," Solara said. Blunt. Accusing. Hurt.

"My what?" Ambrosine glanced up. Solara replaced the food tray on the bed. She would not look at him. Why wouldn't she look at him…? Still clutching Fergus to his chest, he circled around to Solara's side of the rumpled little hospital bed. She arched just one eyebrow and shifted a step away. Even so, Ambrosine wrapped her in an arm and a wing. "Mm. And do you know what else I love? I love it when you spend your weekends with us. It looks like this was a busy one."

She resisted. When he turned questioningly to her, pain and apology soaked her face. What an interesting expression.

"Solara? Is something the matter? He's okay. I'm sure we're safe here. No one will let my dad hurt any of us. We're okay."

No words spilled from her blue lips in reply, even in a whisper. She couldn't say them. Instead, mutely, Solara turned her eyes to the ceiling.

"I love you," Ambrosine told her, bracing Fergus on his hip.

She let him hug her, even squeeze her, when he tried again. But even when she closed her eyes and started to shake in his gentle arms, his chin resting on her head as he murmured, "Shh, shh, I love you, we're okay forever now"s into her ear, she didn't say a single word.


	49. (95) All I Ever Wanted

**A/N -** As I was writing this, I realized I should clarify something just to be sure we're all on the same page. The point of the "teenage celebrity kids" arc is that Poof and co. grew up in a society where everyone is held to adult standards and expected to be reasonable and mature. Fairy society is very, "You know yourself better than anyone, so make the choices that are right for you."

By the time they're in high school, Fairy society expects children to have the capability to make mature, rational decisions. They could literally get married at this age and no one would bat an eye, because Fairy society just assumes that any choice they make is one that was well thought out. Only… the gang are still awkward teens and don't always think in rational ways. Just so we're clear, I don't support all the choices these guys make; I'm just here to tell a story about super dramatic celebrity children with really messy relationships. You know the drill.

* * *

 _Summary:_ Poof prepares to attend Goldie's coronation as will o' the wisp ambassador, and struggles to sort out his feelings on his love life or lack thereof.

 _Characters:_ Poof, Goldie, Cosmo, Wanda, Foop, Hiccup, Finley, Sammy, Cavatina, Daxton, Anti-Cosmo, assorted ceremony attendees

 _Rating:T_

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Mind Your Manners" / "How Much Is Too Much?"

 _Prerequisites:_ "Evolution Hopeful", "Shadow", "Mature" and/or "Grooming", "Watch and Learn", "Temptation"

* * *

 **95\. All I Ever Wanted** (Far future; approximately 10,000 years after the "Temptation" Prompt)

 _Year of Water, Winter of the Shattered Lake_

* * *

 _I'm not at all into dudes, but I would totally go out with you if you asked,_ was a weird thing to think about a person. Especially a fumbling intern who was just fitting you for a tux. Poof would have preferred purple silk, but Goldie had begged him to wear green to match her dress, so he relented. It was her special day, after all. Happy girlfriend, happy… day end.

Mama pressed her hand against his forehead, and Poof quickly glanced away from the tawny-haired drake measuring his leg. "Poof, you've been sweating since we came in here. Are you feeling all right?"

Poof licked his lips. Still too dry. His gaze darted to the tri-panel mirror in front of him, where his flushed cheeks and the long pink scar across his collarbone burned like triple blisters. The scar looked worse than it felt; it really wasn't a big deal anymore. Poof straightened his wings. "Uh. Super nervous. Pretty crazy, huh? I won't even be the center of attention, and I'm still dripping buckets. I mean…" He wiped his wrist across his head, pushing her hand away. "Geez. Goldie gets coronated as wisp ambassador this weekend. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about that. She's really moving up in the world, and I'm just that same old idiot on the saucerbee team."

"It's not her real coronation yet," Mama reminded him, brushing down a spike in his hair. "No cameras this time."

"I know, I know. But to the wisps, it's official." Poof's gaze wandered back to the intern with the measuring tape. The guy suddenly snapped up straight and zipped away, muttering numbers in an endless loop. Inwardly, Poof sighed and allowed his shoulders to slump. The intern was really nice, and he smelled fresh, like a bundle of clean clothes. Poof really hoped he'd come back, and wouldn't bring his old gray-haired grump of a boss with him.

"Isn't there a special ceremony that comes after the coronation? Some sort of wedding event, or something along those lines?"

Poof froze. She asked the question innocently, but nothing was ever unintentional with his mama. His mouth drier than ever, Poof glanced up. His mama's eyes studied his face as though searching for a crumb among his freckles.

"Y-yeah. There will be a ceremony. Back when most wisps still lived in Earth's underground, they used to, uh… celebrate new burrows with special ceremonies and stuff. After all the global warming stuff happened and the Earth wisps moved up to Pixie Woods, a lot of the old customs changed. Idona will give Goldie the key to a brand new cabin where she'll live, instead of some dirty tunnel underground, so that's nifty. She'll still, uh… 'seal' it when the coronation is over, but it won't be in front of witnesses like in the old days, she said, I think."

"And she's supposed to seal it with her primary romantic partner, if I remember correctly. Is that right?"

Poof took an interest in the button on the end of his jacket sleeve. Sweat droplets beaded on his upper lip. One of his legs itched behind the knee. "Haha. Yep. She'll probably pick Daxton. Trust me, I'd be very okay with that."

Mama arched her usual brow higher. "Okay, sweetie. I appreciate how mature about this you're being, but if you need to eat your feelings with a little cake or pie-"

 _"Mama."_ For the first time, Poof let his smile slip far enough that he was actually scowling in the mirror. "Goldie and I are polyamorous, okay? I'm perfectly mint with her dating both me and Daxton. We've been doing this since we were in middle school. In wisp society, Goldie is THE top wisp now. She's gonna be expected to have a bunch of drakes move into the ambassador cabin and garden, cook, and take care of the place for her, whether she decides to be intimate with them or not. Having lots of boyfriends is just a social status thing in her culture, and I've accepted that. Can you please be supportive of us, too? You promised you'd try."

Mama bit her lip, but encircled his shoulders with her arms in a gentle squeeze. "Whatever you choose to make of your life, baby, I will always do what I can to love and support you."

"Mm." Poof leaned his head against hers. When she pulled away, he straightened his collar and said, "Thanks for taking me out, Mama. I'm glad I didn't have to try figuring this out all by myself."

"Of course." Mama licked her finger and tried to press the spike down again. "We'll jump at any chance to see our baby again. And, Daddy should be taking his special turkey roast out of the oven right now. That will put you down for a good night's sleep tonight."

Poof couldn't help it. He snorted. "Yeah, right. Knowing my insomnia? Good luck. Besides, you know I don't eat any more meat than I have to."

Mama sighed. "That's what I told him, but he insisted nonetheless. It would mean the world to him if you'd at least pretend to like it. If he keeps piling it on and you need an excuse to duck away, just give me a nudge underneath the table."

"I'll try…"

"Thanks, sweetie. Now, who else will be there at the coronation?"

"Mostly wisps," Poof said with a shrug. "She invited the whole gang, but Finley turned her down. Sammy's coming. Foop or Hiccup, one of them. Anti-Goldie for sure."

"Never would have been allowed back when I was a child," Mama murmured. "Two counterparts in the same room? Not so soon after the war. Times really do change."

Poof watched her from the corner of one eye. Mama never talked about the will o' the wisp side of her heritage much, and he always wished she would. "Were you there when Idona Ivorie was coronated ambassador?"

Mama chuckled. "Oh, no. That was just before the war- the second war. I was up at school when I heard the news. Always a wiry, wild thing, that one. Braided her pretty golden hair, but never brushed it. Lovely purple wings, but the strangest pale pink eyes… She used to wear this ugly, ratty hat."

"Goldie said she still does, but only when she isn't out in public."

"I'm sure," Mama said with another laugh. Poof smirked. Making his mama smile would always be one of his little joys in life. Then she folded her arms and said, "I hope Cavatina isn't there."

Poof frowned, trying to remember if Goldie had mentioned his name. "I don't know. Idona's kind of his mom, so I think he'd want to?"

Mama closed her eyes. "Please… If he is there, don't taunt or tease him in any way. My mother's intuition gives me a bad, bad feeling about that boy. I know I shouldn't say this without any proof, but he isn't stable in the head."

"Yeah, well." Poof rotated his wrists back and forth, setting off a bunch of little snapping sounds when his joints clicked. "He's a little weird, but he's like a half-brother to Goldie since she grew up training under Idona. If she wants to invite him, I'm not gonna complain."

She didn't remove her eyes from the scar along his neck. Averting his gaze, Poof touched it with his fingertips. The original cut had been pretty deep. Deep enough that it had jumped the core-sync and left Foop with a matching scar in the exact same spot on his own collar. Still, he refused to hide it or ever feel ashamed that it was there.

"Mama, don't worry about me. If worse comes to worst, I'm pretty handy with a wand. Cavatina's unbalanced and he lashes out sometimes, but if Goldie trusts him enough to invite him to her party, then I do too. Who knows? He might not even come. And besides!" Here, he flashed his most charming _I'm your little boy please love on me forever_ smile. "You and Dad will be there to watch my back."

But not too closely, he hoped. He wanted to squeeze in at least a brief quiet moment to congratulate Goldie on her coronation in private.

The tawny-haired drake with the measuring tape returned a moment later, still mumbling numbers to himself. He re-measured Poof's leg unhappily, then double-checked the size of the slits needed for his wings. When his counting finally ended, he poked the very tip of his tongue between his lips and narrowed his eyes. Dear _dust,_ that snapped Poof to attention. He stifled a gasp by feigning it was a cough. I mean, the guy had been good-looking before with his light beard and tall posture, but the way he stuck out his tongue now was just downright _precious._ He looked like a little lion cub. Poof longed to tap his tongue with his finger, just to see if it would recoil like a spring. That would be funny, but probably get both him and his mama kicked from the tux shop to the curb.

Poof wiped his hands twice on his thighs. Yikes. His thoughts jumbled together into one long smear. He'd never felt that kind of jolt from being near a drake before. _Focus, champ._ Seriously. He inhaled, tasting the scents of free-range huckleberries, warm coconut milk, and freshly ironed laundry on his tongue. Grilled salmon in there, too, very faintly; possibly what the tawny-haired drake had eaten for lunch. Oh _wow_ , that was good stuff. Poof's mouth began to water, which was terribly embarrassing, because he hadn't actually wanted to eat more meat than the carnivorous dragonfly parts of his biology required for the last 50,000 years. If he hadn't felt obligated to stand still in front of the tri-panel mirrors with his arms outstretched, he'd have loved to pull the smaller drake towards him by a loop of his tape measure and bury his nose in his shirt. Could all those crazy smells really belong to just one fairy? Four completely contrasting scents all blending together into something so wonderful wasn't entirely the norm, and honestly, Poof found his interest in the guy very, very piqued because of it.

 _Oh! Gee. Um. Okay._ Poof clenched his chest with one hand. So, uh, this was happening now. This wasn't exactly a passing glance here. No, Poof quickly found himself reveling in the most minute touches on his skin. Each time the intern's quick hands brushed against his back, the hairs on his neck tingled up. His fingers curled, then straightened slowly. Liquid magic rushed inside his head. Goosebumps bubbled beneath his shirt. Ahaha… Had the guy noticed the effect his presence had on him? Smoof, he'd probably noticed. Had his _mama_ noticed too? Stupid Fairy senses; you could never hide anything from them. Not even butterfly-filled stomach flips. Weren't those sorts of reactions allowed to be kept private? Thing is, Poof didn't really _want_ everyone within his radius figuring out that he'd gone from zero to _'Mind if I buy you a soda and tuck you in on my couch with a homemade quilt, studmuffin?'_ in three seconds flat.

 _Did I really just think that out loud?_

A little squeak left his lips. The intern paused. Their reflections made brief eye contact. Two seconds of awkward silence passed, which Poof spent resisting the urge to crumple to the floor and dissolve into dust. Then the intern smiled shyly and straightened his measuring tape. He went back to work, while Poof flushed and picked very noticeably at his collar.

* * *

Poof flopped on the couch, pulling his wand away from his ear as Anti-Marigold snapped, "Y'all can't just send your main character to the afterlife while they're still alive and call that an ending!" The line fizzled with static when her voice was loudest, but the gist of her criticism came through clearly. Not exactly the way he'd planned to spend the night before Goldie's coronation, but he always appreciated her honesty on his latest work.

"I dunno, I think it's okay as long as I drop enough foreshadowing before it happens?" Reaching over his head, Poof twirled his finger around a string of blue and gold holiday lights hanging from the dorm wall. None of their gang had done a good job pinning them above the couch, and one side sagged way farther down than the other. Poof stuck out his tongue at the winter trellis standing in the corner and kicked his legs out in front of him. "Besides, that's not really the end. I promise, I'll wrap it all up in the last couple chapters. It just takes me time."

"Poof, you have a _problem_. I just X'd out fifteen pages worth of junk in the middle you didn't really need to get the point across. Fifteen, Poof. Most of it is super repetitive, like you forgot where you were going halfway through and just started over, again and again."

His knee-jerk response was a grunt. A few seconds later he followed up with, _"I_ think it's more effective that way."

He could practically see her shaking her head, pacing back and forth in her apartment on the other end of the line. "It's clunky and requires the reader to remember a character who hasn't even shown up for the last quarter of the manuscript. Just… promise me y'all'll write a draft without her in it just to see what happens. Then y'all can decide whether or not it's necessary."

"But I already know it's necessary! I know things that are coming that you don't, so I'm trying to weave some details in there in advance." Poof pushed his fingers through his hair and groaned at the ceiling. "Okay, okay. You know what? I trust you. That scene did feel a little clunky while I was working on it. Send me your revision notes and I'll try to cut its length by half. I mean, I guess there are a few lines of dialogue in the middle I can afford to lose. Plus, there is that scene where he mentions the shape of his nose at a time when a normal person wouldn't normally be thinking- Oh, hang on; Hiccup's coming out. Call you back. Thanks for giving it a look, Anti-Goldie. You're the best."

He switched off the communicator on his wand and sheathed it at his hip. A few seconds later, the door to Foop's and Finley's bedroom opened. Poof wasn't surprised in the least to see that Hiccup was still in control of Foop's body, considering how much affectionate purring he'd heard in there tonight…

Yep. There was the victim of the evening: A groggy-eyed elf who stumbled out into the main room, his blond hair still rumpled from lack of rest. Trenton, right? He'd thrown his ragged band t-shirt on backwards. Poof wasn't sure how that was even possible, considering that most people tended to notice when the slits for their wings were exposing their pecs instead. A beaming Hiccup kept right on his heels all the way to the apartment door, prattling on about some glowworm aesthetic he had. Oh, fudge- it was going to be one of _those_ evenings. Besides his striped socks, the anti-fairy wore only a white sweater that barely covered his hips, let alone anything below. Poof politely pretended not to notice.

At the door, Hiccup giggled and tucked a scrap of dark hair behind his ear. "Thanks for, um… you know. Teaching me all that stuff about spoons. I really liked that. Y-you can come back any time, you know. Just ask me. You have my number now."

"Yeah," Trenton said, sounding skeptical. His hand inched closer to the doorknob. Oblivious, Hiccup booped him in the nose before planting a kiss on his cheek in good-bye (Poof smothered a laugh behind his knuckles). Trenton's smile strained, but he thanked him gracefully and left.

The door clicked shut. Hiccup locked it with a happy sigh. His hand moved to his cheek. With a decisive nod, he floated over to the cabinet where they kept the hot chocolate mix. Poof waited several minutes to give his counterpart (almost-counterpart?) time to notice him. When it became obvious Hiccup was too distracted stirring his hot chocolate around with his spoon, and once he'd started coming around the counter to head back to his room, Poof finally decided to speak up.

"Evening, Hiccup."

Hiccup made a sound very close to, _"Ksdhfkjsdvsk?!"_ and fumbled with his mug. The drink flipped straight out of his hands and splashed across the carpet. The mug didn't break, but that stain was going to be annoying to get out even _with_ magic. Hiccup snapped his arms down straight by his sides and squeezed his eyes as tight as a coffin.

"Poof! Were you _spying_ on me?"

"Sorry," Poof mumbled, uncrossing his legs. "I forgot you don't sense auras. I'll try to make more noise next time."

"Make sure you do! I'm _embarrassed."_ So saying, Hiccup buried his face in his hands.

"Yeah, sorry, bro. Listen… Hiccup…" Poof scrubbed behind his neck. He glanced up at the ceiling and then back down at his untied shoelaces. Wow, he needed to stop buying shoes with laces. "Can I like, talk to you for a sec?"

Hiccup tugged down the hem of his sweater and blew nonexistent bangs out of his eyes. "That's fine, I guess."

"It's kind of serious."

"That's okay. So am I right now."

Poof wrapped his arms around his middle. Leaning forward, he squeezed out, "So um, how did you even figure out that you like drakes?"

"Really?" Hiccup blinked, then bit his lower lip so hard, Poof wondered if his fangs would draw blood. He bundled his hands in his sweater hem. "Um… I'm not the best person to ask, because I think I always knew. I was born at age 200,000, you see. I wanted to kiss bad boys even a long time ago when Foop was just a pup. I was very, very happy when we finally came into our adult wings. I don't hate using Foop's body as much as I used to now that he's almost as grown up as I am. It's much more fun to be alive now that we're over 150,000, because now I can legally do as much with older drakes and damsels as I want to. I've tried not to rush, but I have plans. Do you know that leprechaun girl on the other side of the dorm, Appalachia? Of course you do; everybody knows Appalachia. Well, I heard she's down to get warm and cozy with _anybody,_ hee hee. She's really pretty, and she said she'd love to have a date with me in February! I'm excited. Valentine's Day is in February, so I think she has big plans for me too."

"Uh, right, okay." Poof tried again. "So, uh, do you have any advice on figuring out if I might be attracted to drakes or not?"

"Lots of Playsprite magazines," Hiccup said wisely, settling on his heels. "The Anti-Fairy pin-ups are wrong because they're made by Fairies who don't know we don't look like them down there, but I really like the Fairy ones. You can borrow some of mine; Foop will just rip them to pieces if he finds them anyway."

"Huh."

Hiccup tilted his head. "You sound confused. You can also just kiss drakes to see if you like them. Maybe you don't know this, but Finley kisses everybody who asks. He can only go as far as kisses because he was born a tomte, so if he ever has intercourse even once, he'll just die. Like a bumblebee. Just. _Pewww._ I think it's worth it, but he doesn't agree with me, so we have to get really creative when we do our thing. Mostly me. Pixies aren't very creative."

"Thanks, Hiccup," Poof said, eyes shut. "I know about Finley. Listen, I just…" He scratched the back of his neck again. Then he upturned one hand, clenching and unclenching at nothing. "Is it possible to like drakes and _not_ want to kiss them?"

"Oh, sure." Finally, Hiccup bent down to pick up his mostly-empty mug. He made a face at the puddle of hot chocolate beside it. "Lots of people have fun without attaching messy strings of commitment. Ah, I've noticed it's not very common in Fairy World, but we Anti-Fairies do it all the time so we can prove we're friends. You and me are not friends. I don't like you because you're a boring goody two-shoes and you always get in my way. It happens a lot and I think you do it on purpose. It's really annoying."

In hindsight, he should have seen that coming. Poof forced a nervous chuckle and wiped the sweat from his neck on the leg of his pants. "Okay, not like that. I don't want to, uh…" Stuttering over his words, he defaulted to, "I don't want to pair up with drakes like _that_ , you know? I was just wondering, is it weird if I like drakes, but I don't want to kiss them OR blitz them?"

"Hmm? Ah…" Hiccup went cross-eyed. He bounced the mug in his hand. "It's a little weird."

"Because I don't," Poof said, just in case Hiccup hadn't gotten the message yet.

"Oh. Then I don't think you like drakes."

Poof ruffled the back of his hair. "I don't know. I kind of think I might. Lately I've been getting these urges to put my arms around drakes and pull them in close until our foreheads bump, but my crazy ideas don't stop there. I want to, uh…" His cheeks warmed, but he forged on anyway, because it was Hiccup, and basically nothing was off-limits in conversation with Hiccup. Poof dropped his hands to his knees. "I- I want to be the one to pull off a guy's necktie after he's had a long day. I want him to relax beside me and maybe even giggle when we're alone together. I want to pull him into my lap and nestle my chin in his hair while we binge-watch old cartoons that used to run when we were kids. I want him to light up when I float inside the room. Oh geez, and I want him to want me- Want him to want to nuzzle up against my chest and just fall asleep so safe and warm on top of me… Dust, I can't stop thinking about it. I want sleepy cuddles so _bad_ right now."

"You have a girlfriend." Hiccup sounded surprised for the first time. "Cuddle her. She can wear a tie."

"Goldie doesn't get it," Poof said, which was _really_ hard to say, because he _really_ liked her and didn't want to say anything mean behind her back. "Believe me, I've tried getting her on board with the idea ever since that day at the cabin when we Tarrow dance'd. I'm a snugglebug. I love cuddles, but they're hard for Goldie when they don't lead up to kisses and stuff; she just doesn't see the point if it doesn't go anywhere. She thinks it's hot and sweaty, but not in a good way. Besides, that's just… not what I'm looking for. I dunno. Cuddling with Goldie is great, but…"

Lacking better words, since Hiccup still looked blank, Poof shrugged and just said, "It doesn't, uh, 'turn me on,' I guess. But when I think about cuddling drakes, I just feel… really happy? Not like THAT or anything. Just, you know. Normal happy, like when you've just thought up a really good joke that made everyone laugh. It's a safe, friendly kind of happy. Does that make sense?"

Hiccup blinked very, very slowly. "You have a boyfriend. Cuddle him. He can wear a tie too. Finley has ties you can borrow."

"Daxton's _Goldie's_ boyfriend," Poof protested. "I mean, I know him and he's witty and fun, but I've never thought of him like _that._ I never thought I liked drakes until this week happened."

"But you forget things all the time."

Poof blinked and looked up. Hiccup gave him his no-nonsense stare, eyebrows raised and hands on his hips.

"This is like when you wrote that scene you thought was really funny in your story, and you kept telling us about it every day at breakfast for a whole week as if you'd never said it before. Your attention is really bad sometimes. You forget a lot of things. Just during lunch today, I watched you put leftovers in the fridge and then get excited ten minutes later when you opened it and found your leftovers."

"I'm not that smart," Poof said softly. "I've never been smart."

Hiccup's eyes crossed like he was listening to a voice only he could hear inside his head. Apparently, he was. "Foop says you had this same conversation with him yesterday."

"I don't remember that…"

"It's okay! All Fairies have bad memories. It's because being upset ruins your magic, so your people got really good at repressing thoughts that don't make them happy and that's why it's really hard to argue with you about politics."

"Okay, well, you're not Foop, so just put up with me talking about this again, okay? Let me be straightforward. I want to cuddle dudes, Hiccup. Lots and lots of dudes. And that's it." Poof X'd and un-X'd his arms. "No kisses, nothing. I just want hugs from guys, like… a lot. Touching people is super important to me, but I don't want to go any further than snuggling with anyone but Goldie. I know it's kind of weird, but I just thought I'd talk to you about it because you're the only one here who likes both drakes _and_ damsels, except maybe me. I don't really know where I stand on that yet. Get it?"

"Ohh," Hiccup said. He retracted his wings. Either a sneer crept into his voice, or Poof was just imagining things. Turning towards his bedroom door, he called, "Finley, can you please talk to Poof about gyne/drone stuff? I'm not good at this."

The constant putter of Finley's video games, so familiar that Poof hadn't even noticed it, suddenly switched to the twinkle of a pause screen. A handheld device snapped shut. Oh. Poof felt his face begin to heat. 'Gyne/drone stuff?' Was THAT what this feeling was for? He hadn't officially gotten the talk about the, uh, nests and the honeycomb from his parents yet, but he knew the basics. _C'mon, moron. You're a gyne who wants to kiss damsels but cuddle drakes, duh. Of_ course _you're getting preening urges. Couldn't you figure that out on your own? That was obvious, ya big dummy._

While Finley rustled his way out of his blankets, Poof sighed and ran his fingers through his messy ponytail. "Gee, Hiccup. Sorry my words are such a mess. I'm kind of an idiot like that. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, I know you and Finley are kind of a thing, so I've been thinking I might ask Sammy if he wants to cuddle with me. Do you think he'd be into that?"

Hiccup gasped. Startled, Poof looked up again. The anti-fairy stood there in his short sweater and striped socks, his palm pressed against his lips and two claws threaded around the mug handle. His eyes had gone enormous. He glanced away very quickly, but Poof still noticed when his hands began to shake. Oh, great. What had he said wrong this time? He held up his arms defensively.

"I mean, I don't wanna do the whole _crash and burn_ thing with Sammy or anything. I'm just saying, I want to snuggle Seelie drakes who aren't other gynes, so that rules out you and Fin both. Sammy would be perfect. I just really, really need hugs sometimes, but… with super exclusive commitment, I guess? Me and Sammy share a room, so he'd be available for cuddling any time if he's into it. I dunno. Geez, that sounds dumb. I don't know what I'm talking about." Poof wiped a thumb across his brow. "Okay, this is terrible to say, because I don't mind it when Goldie dates other guys, but when I think about drakes I want to hug… I care a lot. Like, seriously, even in my daydreams I care a lot. I'd _definitely_ get jealous if I found out the drakes I usually cuddle with also cuddle other people too. Is that weird?"

"I… I, um…" Hiccup tightened his fingers over his knuckles. His claws bit into his sweater. His entire body shook. So much so that Poof started to get up off the couch to see if he was okay. Before he could get far, Hiccup threw the empty mug down on the carpet. It bounced. "I have to go," he blurted, and flew back into his room. Poof blinked, not sure if he should follow and try to help the guy relax or something. But Finley came out just then, and _he_ didn't seem too concerned. He just gave Hiccup a pat on the rear as he shot by, and that was all. Poof's attention went to Finley.

"Yo Poofster." The pixie pushed his shades higher in his hair. A familiar vial of purple liquid bounced against his chest on its chain. It glinted blue in the string lights around the room. "Word on the wing is that your drone-lust is super up today."

The word 'lust' kind of bothered him. It made his fantasies sound pretty wild and never-ending. That basically described his week, but still. Poof started to get off the couch, then remembered who he was talking to and sat down again. "Uh. Please don't call me 'Poofster.' That's what my dad calls me."

Finley shrugged. He took off his hat to scratch his hair, then flipped it on his head again. It sagged forward, limp and lazy. "Hiccup made it sound like you wanted to talk about dudes, and I'm always down for that. Hit me."

Poof averted his eyes. "Well, uh, there's not a lot to say. I thought that maybe I liked drakes too and not just damsels, so I was just asking Hiccup about attraction, but then I figured out it was just my gyne instincts pushing me to preen with drones. Sorry to waste your time."

"Who was it?" Finley set his hands to his hips, his smile sweeping up just one side of his face. When Poof gave him a questioning look, he rolled his eyes. "Come on, fuzzy. Even a sweet potato like you has got to have some crooked thoughts now and again."

"Not really? I've just been daydreaming about cuddles all week." Poof blinked. "I… Wow. No, I… I didn't even get as far as preening fantasies. At least, I don't think I did. It was just all… couch cuddles. Um. Clothes on. Holiday pajamas with snowflakes and evergreen trees. We were stirring hot chocolate with candy canes and wearing fuzzy socks, laughing at our shows."

Finley groaned, leaning back on his heels. His hands went into his sweatpants pockets. "Poof, you're _killing_ me here. You call that a fantasy? Nobody's that pure. Listen, I've waited my whole life to bond with you over gyne stuff. You've had a week to think about drakes, so what do you really want to do with them when they're all over you?"

Poof thought about it for a minute, staring at the twinkling lights beside the bedroom door. He tapped one finger against his front tooth. "Actually, I kind of want a kitten."

"A kitten," Finley repeated. "You want to sit on a couch with an adorable snugglebug and pet a kitten." He raised his hand and made a quick _Come along_ gesture with a flick of his fingers. "Come at me, bro. I know you can do better than that. We're working out your deepest fantasies here. Go for something crazy. Something you've always wanted. Get creative!"

Poof opened his mouth.

"Don't say 'two kittens.'"

Poof closed his mouth again. His hand gravitated behind his neck, and he glanced at the ceiling high overhead. "Look, I dunno. I know _Canterbury v. Oakwing_ says we're not supposed to out drones without their permission, but is there any way you could maybe guide me someplace where you know I'll bump into some? Maybe I'll have an easier time once I start a conversation."

"Wow, you're in luck. I know a little place by the cloudship dock, and I can get you in lickity split." Finley chuckled at his own joke and threw his arm behind Poof's neck. "How's next Wednesday sound? Just a couple drakes hanging out, checking out dudes, letting 'em down easy… We're gonna get your neck slimed by a smokin' hottie, smoof yes. And then when we get home, you and me are gonna get down to business, because I'm gonna slime your face just to make sure you remember who's boss. It's not you. No it's not, is it, baby?"

He smooshed Poof's cheek against his own. Poof tightened his lips. "I don't want this."

"Sorry, puffball. Can't hear you over the fact that you ain't a virgin anymore, and you smell like it too. You went that route, so I'm allowed to 1-up you on face slimes. Fight me."

"Wha- No! I don't want to fight you." Poof twisted away from him. "Fin, I'm just not ready to preen! I never got the Talk, and I don't know any of the communication signals. I don't want to lick anybody's face. I just wanna start with cuddling."

"It's totally normal to have nerves," Finley assured him. His thumb moved to his chin, and a dreamy look came over his eyes. "Ah, I remember the thrill of nuzzling up to my first drone. He was twice as experienced as I was and that's the kind of step-by-step guidance I needed at that age… You met Blueberry Pie, right? Wish I could remember his real name; all I remember is that wild blue hair of his. A little uptight, but a real good teacher. I should give him a call and hook you up with him."

Poof frowned, clutching the front of his shirt. "Uh, no thanks. Look. I'm seriously not interested in preening licks right now. Could you set me up with a drone who doesn't mind if we take it slow to start?" Whether his cuddle partner was a drone or not wasn't really important to him, as long as the guy didn't make their hugging weird.

Finley gave him a funny look. "You'd really be okay cuddling up to a drone without taking it all the way to preening?"

"Well, yeah. I'm just starting out. I don't know if I'm okay with licking a guy's face yet. It would just feel weird."

Blinking, Finley shifted his weight to the other side of his body. He crossed his arms. "You know preening's just natural, right? Bees do it, and I think they're onto something. Get in touch with your wild side and let your instincts take over. Don't overthink it, bro. It's like a spiritual experience or something, I swear. There's nothing better to wash the anxieties of a long day away. Hey, you might even get a good night's sleep for once. I know I always do."

"You really think so?" Poof tried to imagine himself lying back on his bed in his comfiest pajamas, running his tongue between another drake's mouth and nose, or pressing soft kisses near his ear. The thought made his skin crawl. Oookay… Well, the idea was still a little foreign for now, but Poof could see himself trying that type of thing out someday. Maybe. It probably wouldn't feel as good as one of Goldie's kisses, but if his partner enjoyed it, then he was willing to please as best as he was able.

Then his imagination flashed to a tiny drake in an oversized T-shirt and nothing else, leaning over him with the glimmer of lust in his eyes and threads of drool dripping from his panting tongue. Poof's gag reflex kicked in instantly. _Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope._ He shook his head, not totally sure if the mental image was an accurate portrayal of preening and not really wanting to ask. "Okay, yeah, no. I'm willing to give licks to someone else if it makes them happy, but I wouldn't want anyone to do it to me if I didn't have to. It just grosses me out right now. Maybe someday if I know them well, but yeah, no. No."

"… Are you sure you're a gyne?"

"Um." Was it really that weird to not want preening licks? Poof bit his lip and backpedaled, automatically spinning his wings. "I- I'm sure I'll want licks later. I'm just saying, I'd have to be really comfortable with my partner first. Like, getting my neck licked is something I'd want to do with a real romantic partner, not just a good friend. It would just be weird for my friends to do."

Poof clapped his hand against his mouth. Had he really just said 'I'd want to preen with a real romantic partner' out loud? Yikes. Fairy/Anti-Fairy marriages still weren't legal yet despite the surge of public approval in the last two centuries- let _alone_ a far less popular concept like marriage between gynes and drones. His face flooded with guilt. "I- I mean, I don't want to, uh, y'know, sleep with a drone or anything, but I… Ah, geez. I just can't see myself _ever_ being comfortable enough to preen with another drake unless he felt more like a boyfriend to me than a best friend, you know? Like, a boyfriend that I would never kiss or sleep with, but one I'd definitely be okay showing up at family reunions with, or doing chores with, or adopting a puppy with. I think I could preen with someone like that. Does that make sense?"

But while Finley looked skeptical, he didn't express any judgment. "Ah. See, I'm not big on that life myself, but I've heard committed partnerships are kinda the norm, so don't worry about it right now. Anyway, you'll want licks when you're in the mood."

"You think so?"

"Aw, yeah. Listen. I love kissing drakes, but I'm not gonna lie- preening licks are like, next level smoof. It's like kissing, only a _zillion_ times better, because kissing isn't natural. We made it up, y'know? But preening's biological. When you get real into it, all your insect instincts just flare at the same time, and your mind just kinda floats away into total empty bliss for like, hours. Glory, glory…"

Poof tilted his head. "Like getting high off peppermint?"

Finley gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes. He dropped his shades from his forehead back to his nose. "Nah. Even better. Get you a drone with preening game so hard, it feels like you're ascending straight to Plane 23 when he gets you going. I used to preen a drone like that a couple decades back, but when he got upset it wasn't going anywhere, I had to break it off. Real shame too 'cuz he spoiled me rotten and no one's ever measured up since, but I don't do touchy-feely emotions. No exceptions. I call my own shots whenever I want to."

"Oh."

"Forget drakes. If you're not into them, there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe it would help if you imagine your girlfriend in bed with you, just to get you started. Start by licking her face, and then just imagine she's a dude."

Poof closed his eyes and pulled up a mental picture of the room he shared with Sammy, with the piles of notebooks that contained most of his one-shot drafts strewn everywhere and posters of his favorite saucerbee teams covering his walls. String lights glowed all around the window, right by his bed. Every year they'd roomed together, Sammy had always let him have the bed by the window. He had a desk with a soft chair, and his old-fashioned laptop that needed a converter cable for its charger to work in Fairy World, and which he spent way more time using for writing fanfiction than actual schoolwork. Hesitantly, Poof allowed himself to lie safely in his bed, snug in his minky blankets.

So far, so good. Okay. Okay. He could do this. Here goes. Poof tried to imagine Goldie gazing down at him in her pink _Sparks That Flew_ shirt, the tiniest tip of her tongue poking from her lips, but the scene blurred, he heard her giggle in the distance, and instant panic shut down his mind. Poof's eyes snapped open. "NO! No, no, no. I don't… wanna do that with her. I'm just… not ready to think about her looking at me like that again. I can't do it. It freaks me out."

"Then imagine something else," Finley said, like memories were a choice. Poof glanced away, clutching his wrist.

"Please don't make me do this anymore…"

Finley sighed, and clapped one hand on Poof's shoulder. "All right, so fantasies are off the table right now. Hey, listen. When you're just starting out, licking faces seems pretty wild, especially if you're not into drakes even a little."

"Tell me about it."

"And I pity you dearly. But the thing is, once you get all riled up, you'll _want_ to preen. I promise. Let your instincts take over. When you've got a nice drone all to yourself, just lick your lips and go for it. That's my motto, and look how much I'm loving life! Never chase off somebody who's interested, Poof: That's rule number one. Lying on a bean-bag with a cute drake's tongue rasping the base of your neck in slow-mo while you mash your way through a brand new video game- that's smoofin' amazing. A special kind of high that even peppermint can't ever get you. Hey, I wanna show you something." Finley slapped Poof's back, then leaped past him to swipe his vidscreen projector from the kitchen counter.

Better than peppermint? Poof wondered about that as Finley moved to the couch and gestured for him to follow. "This will help," the pixie said. He turned on the projector and set it on the coffee table. A moment later, he'd pulled up some downloaded video of a bee colony saved to a folder marked IN CASE OF MIRACLE CLICK HERE.

It was, um… definitely a bee colony. There were lots of bees and stuff crawling around the empty honeycombs. The camera seemed to focus on one large bee in particular, tracking her movements through the hive as all the other bees swarmed around her. Yep. That was a beehive. Those were bees. Poof squinted, trying to sort meaning from the hum of wings. The video's duration said it lasted twenty minutes. After two, Foop stormed from his room and ordered them to turn down the volume because "I'm trying to work and you two ought to be ashamed of yourselves." Poof waited for five before he spoke.

"Why are we watching this?"

"Shh," Finley said, covering his mouth with two fingers. He didn't take his eyes from the screen. Sighing inwardly, Poof settled back and folded his arms. He tried to pay attention, really, but nothing happened in the video aside from all the bees running circles around their queen. His fingers itched for a little peppermint. Finally, he slipped his wand from its sheath and shook it to send a message to Goldie.

 _Guys' night out is getting awk :p Rescue me please?_

It was three more minutes before she answered. _Sorry! Shopping with Sis and Mom. :( Good luck and see you tomorrow! xoxo_

Finley noticed him checking his wand's communicator and paused the video. "How is this not exciting for you?"

"What are you talking about?" After sheathing his wand, Poof upturned his hands at the screen. "This is just bees. Are you joking, or am I supposed to feel something about bees? I literally don't understand the point of this."

After a moment's heavy consideration, Finley shrugged and went back to watching. Poof shook his head in disbelief. He sucked on his bottom lip, then opened a new message window on his communicator. If Goldie was too busy to see him, then Anti-Marigold probably wasn't. The universe was funny that way. With a rattle of his wand, he sent a quick _I'd love to talk roommate drama. Are you busy tonight?_ and waited for her reply. It was almost instantaneous.

 _At my place. Stomach hurts. Bring painkillers?_

Poof blinked. Uh. Okay. Healing charms (and their corresponding curses) were Foop's line of study more than his, but he could give it a shot.

He hadn't swung by Anti-Marigold's apartment in probably a decade, but when he let himself in (the door was unlocked), not much had changed. Same old glass fruit bowl, same old black cat magnets on the freezer, same old blackened wood spatulas, same old hoodies and tank tops thrown everywhere you stepped. She hadn't taken down her winter trellis, or any of the paper reindeer taped on the window, just like how her summer trellis had still been up the last time he'd visited. The empty soda cans and candy wrappers were new, though. Not that Poof was shocked- she was legally an adult Anti-Fairy now, and if Poof were in her position, he'd have splurged on all the sugar he'd ever wanted too. Although, maybe it was for the best in the long run if he _didn't_ have the option to buy peppermint in bulk…

Anti-Marigold herself lay crumpled on one end of the couch on the far side of the room, her arms around her torso and her face twisted up. She looked so absolutely _tiny_ like that- smaller than even Foop. Goldie probably would have sprawled her limbs over as much of the couch as possible, but Anti-Marigold seemed to want to disappear. Poof shut the door behind him and _poof_ ed his coat onto an empty hook nearby.

"Hey." He lifted the pocket spellbook above his head. "I've got painkillers. What do you need?"

"I won the snake-eating contest," she mumbled by way of explanation. Poof chuckled. As he floated over to her, he flipped the book open to its middle.

"That's so you. Okay, let's see what I've got. Hm hm hm. So, uh…" He glanced again at the groggy anti-wisp, then at the book in his hand. His finger rested on the first step of the relief process. "Do you want me to just do it for you?"

"You, please. I'm in pain. Drank lots of soda. Didn't help."

Funny. She looked so like Goldie with her pigtails, the sharp point of her jaw, and the way she curled in all her toes, and yet… she also wasn't Goldie. Anti-Marigold carried herself through life with a less confident air, shying away to the fringes of a party rather than mingling with the big names in the center. She was delicate, fragile, but still so passionate about her dreams. The same blue eyes, but different faces.

Also, Goldie would _never_ let him recite a painkilling charm on her if she was still awake enough to wave a wand. Poof cleared his throat and knelt down by the couch. "I'm gonna have to touch your bare stomach for this, okay?"

"Yep."

Poof was very aware of the quiet throughout her apartment. Her roommates must be out for the evening, and he really hoped they wouldn't find him here and gossip about his reasons for coming by alone. Especially if they found him with his hand up her shirt. Um. Hm. It was a little less weird to keep his attention on the spellbook while he did it. _Don't make it weird, don't make it weird,_ he scolded himself, because Anti-Marigold was his friend, so it shouldn't be weird. She was sick and he was helping, and no one would judge him because it wasn't weird-

His fingers brushed across a row of four thin slits. Poof jerked his hand away. "Ah!"

"Huh?" she mumbled into her arm.

"I just- Sorry, sorry. I forgot anti-wisps have four stomach pouches. Sorry." _Well, that's definitely not like Goldie. Don't go there. Stop it, stop it. Focus_. Carefully, Poof placed his hand on her abdomen again. "How's that?"

Anti-Marigold hesitated. Her fingers tightened in the couch's arm. "Try a little lower, but… not _too_ low."

"Gotcha." Poof slid his hand down accordingly. When she said that was good, he recited the charm listed in the spellbook. It wasn't a very long one, but it did take more energy out of him than he'd expected. His eyelids fluttered with sudden heaviness. Huh. Maybe he really would fall asleep tonight after all. Trying not to let on his exhaustion, he withdrew his hand. "Is that better?"

She stared up at him like she'd never seen him before, squinting at his face and yet a thousand cloudlengths beyond it. "Not yet."

"Well, it's just a charm. It'll take a few minutes to kick in." Poof shut the book again and balanced it between his knees. "Hey, have you seen Foop lately? He's barely around anymore, and when he is, he just gripes about migration routes. Seems like Hiccup's the one who fronts in the body most."

"Ugh." Anti-Marigold sat up, but kept her legs on the couch. "I've noticed. I've tried calling his wand when I know he's not in class, but he never answers, and he swears up and down he never hears it ring. But he says he's coming over a week before Naming Day to treat me to a nice dinner at this new restaurant he found, so that's keeping me going at the- _Oh!"_

"Huh?" Automatically, Poof followed her gaze to the cabinet beneath the entertainment system on the wall. One of Foop's silk button-up pajama shirts lay crumpled on the floor like it had been tossed there in the reckless heat of the moment and forgotten by morning. The red one. He'd been looking for that one for days. Poof's lips twitched into a smirk. Anti-Marigold covered her face with her hands.

"I won't pry," he assured her, even though he longed to needle her just for fun. Anti-Marigold was sort-of part of his friend group, but he wasn't sure if they were on playful joking terms yet, so he let the subject drop.

"Yeah," she said, dropping her attention to the ground. A few seconds of silence passed between them. Poof's eyes wandered to the ceiling.

"He talks about you all the time, you know. It's always" - He slipped into his best Foop impression - "'I'm terribly sorry, but I can't come; I'm going to see my girlfriend that day' and 'Someone tell me where I can find a bouquet that isn't an atrocious barf of colored mess!'"

Anti-Marigold blinked, saying nothing.

"So, anyway. Do you get to do anything special at Goldie's coronation tomorrow?"

"I'm not going."

Poof watched her from the corner of his eye, still sitting on the floor. "Oh."

Sigh. The anti-wisp rested her chin against her knee. "Can I ask something? How'd y'all learn to be okay with the fact that your girlfriend is dating both you and another drake?"

"I don't know. Everyone always told me that's just how wisps were, so I just accepted it. I get a lot of startled looks when I tell people I have a wisp girlfriend, but I just keep a positive attitude, I guess. I don't really care if rumors spread about me. I know what the truth is. It's not their life. It's mine."

Anti-Marigold seemed to consider this for a moment, chewing on the inside of her cheek. She loosened her grip on her knee. "How do you and Goldie find time to blitz _and_ keep up with your regular life obligations?"

"Honestly? We only did it once."

She looked at him curiously. "Then who are y'all blitzing?"

"Nobody. I'm not active right now; Goldie and I only kiss."

"Shut up. Ten thousand years? I don't believe it for a sec."

Poof shrugged and straightened the spellbook in his lap. "The risk isn't worth it to me. I'll just wait until I'm ready to raise a kid. It's not a big deal."

"You can't get pregnant while Finley's pheromones are more dominant than yours." Her brows knit. "So… why did you and Goldie bother to use protection? Foop and I never honey-locked."

Poof scratched the back of his hair. "Well, I mean, it's… it wasn't gonna be your choice. It was… I wouldn't want to force you and Foop to do anything you didn't want to, just because you were born our counterparts."

Anti-Marigold half-bit a harsh laugh. "Then you're the only one who actually cares. You know Goldie's just been sleeping around with everyone for the last ten thousand years, right? I've tracked the dates. She'll spend all day flirting with you, and then she'll go skipping off to flirt with Daxton all night. She doesn't care if she uses protection or not."

"I'm sorry." As his eyes fogged up, Poof blinked to fight his tears. "That must be really hard for you, to not have a choice about pairing up. To just suddenly have to sleep with someone one night that's out of your control to say 'Yes' to. That would be pretty scary. You probably feel trapped and helpless, huh?"

Anti-Marigold snorted. "Yeah. Like you'd understand."

"I do-"

"No you don't," she muttered. Lying down again, she turned her back and folded up her wings. "When have Fairies ever gotten anything about Anti-Fairies right?"

Poof stared at her pigtails, his mouth still open. He shut it and looked away. The seconds ticked by. It was getting late. Tomorrow would be a long and crazy day. He really needed to rest up tonight.

"It's weird," he murmured, tilting back his head. "Goldie never, ever lets me see her vulnerable if she can help it. Her stress builds and builds itself into a wall. I try to talk to her, but she always shuts me out, and I'm her _boyfriend_. Then there's you. You've always let me come over even if you're sick, even if you're in your sloppiest pajamas, even if you're not wearing makeup. You're okay sharing your feelings with me, and we aren't even that close. Isn't it funny?"

Anti-Marigold didn't respond. When Poof turned around, he realized she had drifted off to sleep. Oh well. He left her to it, and swiped the candy canes from her candy bowl on his way out the door.

* * *

Goldie's coronation party was a flurry of activity. The celebration totally enveloped Pixie Woods and stretched all the way from the ambassador cabin's courtyard to the edge of Inkblot City itself. The Head Pixie was nowhere to be found, but Mr. Sanderson and Anti-Wanda sat at/on the table that displayed the guest book and half a cloud sculpture. Anti-Cosmo had shown up too, bouncing everywhere he went and keeping an extremely tight grip on Foop's upper arm the whole time.

Poof? Poof hovered around the water coolers near the ambassador cabin's front steps, constantly pouring ice cubes down the back of his neck and flushing almost as purple as his hair. His parents had raced each other to the dessert table the instant it was unveiled, spurting laughter and shoving each other and generally making goofballs of themselves in front of everyone, as per the norm. Dusty and Anti-Dusty were with them, probably. Sammy, however, lingered nearby (albeit out of pity more than desire to). Finley had actually put on his suit today, and it almost wasn't wrinkled. After Poof dumped his golden cup over his hair again, the pixie leaned his elbow against the cooler and reached down to fill his own. He didn't break eye contact. When he lifted the cup away, he swirled it in his hand.

"Some party, huh? And all for your girlfriend? Your networking game is strong, g-man. So…? Cheat code for your thoughts."

"Ha… ha…" Poof dabbed the sweat on his forehead away with the sleeve of his tuxedo. "Wow, there's sure a lot of drakes here tonight. Pixies _and_ wisps?" He began to rethink his eternal refusal to work at Pixies Inc. Maybe it was about time he began a summer internship, especially if it meant he got to visit the will o' the wisp campground during his lunch break. Those guys made wearing dull brown look _good._ … Oh, and then he could see Goldie too. "Hey, get this: It turns out I'm into skittish nerds, like a lot, heh heh. Geez, Fin! You live like this?"

Finley scanned the courtyard, pressing the rim of his cup against his lips. "Eh, kind of a drag, really. The most exciting thing that happens around here each week is a cloudship hauling in the month's groceries. These just aren't my people."

"Smoof. Ha, have you ever noticed that Rosencrantz is like, ridiculously dorky in the most adorable way possible?"

"He's my big bro, bro."

"No, no, I know." Poof bounced on his toes and searched for any other familiar faces. Pixies were hard to tell apart, but he'd always been pretty good at it, poor memory or not. Call it popular kid social skills, or maybe something spiritual. It was funny. Wandering the woods with the Inkblot City skyline in the distance felt a little like coming home after a long zodiac cycle of school. Yeah. Maybe an internship wouldn't be so bad.

One particularly well-built pixie stood somewhat apart from the noisy social crowd, sipping grape juice and tracking Anti-Cosmo and Foop with his eyes. He wasn't saying or doing anything intimidating, but Poof instantly felt threatened by his presence alone. Now, _that_ was something he could tell Finley: His preening fantasies definitely did not include being forced into a small space with a really creepy guy who was twice as buff as he was.

"Oh boy. Storm coming." Poof gestured across the courtyard with a sweep of his arm. "Who invited Cavatina?"

Sammy blinked and cocked his head. "What do you have against Cavatina?"

"The scar his knife left across prime preening territory?" Finley suggested, popping a strawberry in his mouth. Poof shook his head.

"Nothing really, but _uggh_. He's _so_ bad at small talk. I mean, watch this. Hey, Cavatina!" No response, so Poof raised his voice even louder. "Cavatina Sanderson!"

That got his attention. The pixie finished his grape juice and slowly, very slowly, turned around. The stare he blazed into Poof's forehead could have frozen lava, even through his tinted shades. Undeterred, Poof forced a grin and flew up to him, still clutching his golden cup.

"Cav, hey! It's been like, centuries, huh? It's great to see you actually opening up at a party for once. You always look so tense, y'know? What changed your mind this time around?"

Cavatina gazed at him without blinking. "The secure knowledge that five years from now, I'll have your head on a silver platter. Why?"

"Haha, right back at ya, buddy. Stay minty, you." He withdrew a few beats away with a roll of his eyes. "See what I mean? Total mood-killer, Sammy. There's no talking to this guy." Why was he even here if he was just going to stand by himself and shut down all attempts at conversation? That was just mean. Poof shook his head and tugged one of his sleeves. "Geez, I'm starving. When do we get to eat those cupcakes?"

"Poof? Hey, Poof!"

Poof spun around. "Daxton?"

Indeed, the will o' the wisp was elbowing his way gently through the crowd and waving his hand for attention. He wore a black suit instead of his usual brown today, although it already had a smear of chocolate frosting on one side that looked just like the swirl of his hair. Goldie held his forearm, trying to fix her slipper while staying airborne. Gosh, she looked good. Her hair was all pinned up in pretty curls instead of loose strings or familiar pigtails. She might have conflicting feelings about the typical low-cut bodices and short-hem skirts common in will o' the wisp fashion, but hey, he wasn't complaining. Her black dress shimmered with little emerald fireworks whenever she moved, and she carried so many beads around her neck that it looked like they would weigh her down (P.S. Worth it).

"I'll let you have some privacy," Sammy said, giving Poof two pats on the shoulder. He barely noticed. His chest swelled. Flying forward, he shouted, "Goldie!"

She let go of her foot and raised her arms to hug him. Daxton barely let go of her in time, because when Poof slammed into her, they both went hurtling past him into the crowd. "Poof," Goldie gasped, pushing at his face. "You'll ruin my hair!"

"Aww!" Poof slowed their cannonball motion with a whirr of his wings. When she was floating steadily, he released her shoulders. "Geez, it's so good to see you both! I was worried you'd have to spend all day on the stage being boring."

"I don't do boring," Goldie said cheerfully, then followed a nearby pixie with her eyes. She smirked. "Well, actually…"

"Same old Goldie," Poof teased, butting her forehead with his own.

They rejoined Daxton at the dessert table, and Poof caught them both up to speed on his week of recognizing his interest in drones. Daxton had way too much fun pointing to random people in the crowd and asking Poof if he could sense whether they were drones or kabouters, and teasing that he should sip a little soda and see if that helped. When the wisp spotted one of his brothers and hurried off for a chat, Poof decided to be selfish for once and pull Goldie away for a quick, private kiss on the back porch of the cabin. Gosh, he just never got tired of spontaneous moments like that. He'd have gone on longer if Foop hadn't stumbled across them while trying to duck away from his father and loudly said, _"Ahem?"_

"Oh, shut up," Poof muttered, their moment dissipating. Goldie studied Foop with a grin, and clamped onto his arm. He looked shocked and delighted for about two seconds, until she yanked him down the steps calling, "Anti-Cosmo! Look who I found hiding!"

"No!" Foop screamed, flailing for a handhold. Poof followed them back to the front courtyard with a chuckle.

"Sorry, dude. You deserved that."

Foop was returned to Anti-Cosmo's custody, and Goldie intertwined her fingers with Poof's as they wandered the party. Poof left her for a moment to grab a cupcake and check in with his parents, and when he found her again, she was sitting at a table just for two away from most of the noise. It looked cozy and private, but she'd probably be accepting congratulations all evening. A wisp drake with blue hair had just set a plate of salad in front of her, and breadsticks. She thanked him, smile straining. Poof took the seat opposite his girlfriend, following the drake with his eyes as he fluttered off. Leaning over to Goldie, he tapped her hand and asked, "Would you do that guy with blue hair? He seems pretty cute."

That perked her out of her socially exhausted mood. Her smile became genuine. "Meh. I could take him or leave him. He's nice, but he slouches too much. Besides, old family friend. He's almost like a cousin to me."

"Ah, gotcha."

"Okay, your turn. If you had the chance, would you preen that elf drake over by Mr. Longwood with the pink boutineer?"

"Mm, maybe. As long as he was enjoying it." Poof took a breadstick from the basket. "Okay, but what about that green-haired one over there? Would you do him?"

She turned around to see who he was looking at, then grinned. "Oh, absolutely. Would you preen him if he turns out to be a drone?"

"I could see us snuggling in bed."

"I'll keep an eye on him." Goldie linked her fingers below her chin. "Now the real question is, would you ever preen a pixie?"

"Probably, but not if I thought Finley would find out. I don't wanna make it weird. Maybe after we're all graduated and moved out, though. All right, would _you_ ever do a pixie?"

"Already did, couple years back." She put her finger to her lips. "H.P. was ma~ad."

Poof chuckled and balanced his chin on his knuckles. "Geez, Goldie. I love that we can just talk about this, totally open, no judgment or jealousy. I just love this, y'know?"

She grinned back at him. "I love it too. It's awesome that you're into drones now. Actually, that's what I wanted to talk about."

"Ahaha… What do you mean?"

Goldie shrugged, poking through the leaves of her salad with her fork. Poof wondered who had given it to her, since she'd hated salad ever since they were kids. "Sorry, Poof. I don't mean to put ya on the spot, but as the new wisp ambassador, this is my one day I'm allowed to choose any wisp drake here tonight and invite him to join my future harem. No limits, no exceptions. I'm already dating you and Daxton, and I'm not looking for anyone else right now. So if you're taking an interest in drones, I thought I'd let y'all do the picking for me."

His skin prickled. His wings fluttered against the back of his chair. "Seriously? You're okay with that? Like, me just picking for me?"

"Of course." She flicked her hair behind her shoulder. "I wouldn't offer it if I wasn't, now would I?"

"Thank you! Thank you! Aw, our life is gonna be amazing. You can live in the cabin, and I'll get a job at Pixies Inc. and come to see you all the time, and we'll share kisses by the window in the glow of the trellis lights, and I'll have a drone or two I really like, and I'll try to get comfortable with preening which will be great because you'll always have Daxton to kiss while I'm busy doing that, and everyone can have one big cuddle puddle while we drink milkshakes and watch old reruns together-"

Poof froze, staring at the way she covered her mouth when she giggled. He bit his lip. His hands, high above his head, came down again. "Why are you laughing at me?"

Goldie shook her head and took her first bite of salad with a smile. "You're just always so innocent, like a big little kid. It's endearing."

"Oh," he said. He plucked at the wrapper of his cupcake in silence. What was that supposed to mean? Did she ever take him seriously, like, ever? Crumpling the wrapper in his fist, he rose to his wings. "I should go find my parents before the ceremony starts."

Goldie wrapped her fingers around his wrist. "One more thing, hon."

Chills ran up his arm and down his spine. The chatter of everyone dining around them suddenly seemed a lot softer, like they were alone. Poof turned around. "Yeah?"

Her tongue poked from one side of her lips and made a nervous sweep. "You know how my primary partner and I are supposed to, ah, consummate the ambassador cabin after my coronation's over?"

He nodded. "I'm okay with you and Daxton. Really, Goldie. I know what I signed up for when I agreed to date you. This is important to you, and I'm always gonna respect and support you in that. You don't have to worry about me being jealous."

A beat of silence. Goldie searched his face. Her fingers loosened. "Actually, I talked with Daxton, and, well… I'd really, really like it if y'all finished being on 'break' with me and chose to honor me with your presence tonight. If you're okay with it!"

That threw him. Poof's wings went rigid. His stomach squeezed into a spaghetti noodle. "Oh," he said. "'Me' as in _me_ me?"

Goldie bit her lip. She dropped his arm and smoothed the ruffles of her black and green dress over her knee. "I know we're on 'break' from going that far, but… It's been over 10,000 years, Poof, so I thought it would be okay to ask if y'all are ready again. I miss you."

"Um. Yeah, okay. I'll get back to you on that after the party. I have to talk to my parents first, y'know?"

At that, Goldie's face lit like a star. She threw her arms around him and squeezed him in a hug. She even squealed in his ear. Then she flew off, totally abandoning her salad… and him, standing there, stunned and stony. Automatically, Poof reached towards his back pocket where he usually kept half a candy cane or a baggie of crushed peppermint on hand. It wasn't there. Tuxedo.

He found his parents feeding each other pieces of blueberry pie at a table for two, which they happily turned into a table for three by grabbing him a chair. Poof sat down in a daze. He meant to be basically normal and conversational, but the first words out of his mouth when he lifted his head were, "Dad? How could you _do_ it?"

Dad blinked, his forkful of blueberry pie faltering an inch from Mama's mouth. His bow tie was drastically askew, his grass-green hair ruffled in the wrong direction. He lowered the fork. "Uh… You're gonna need to be more specific. I do a lot of things I'm not always proud of, Poofster."

Poof dropped his face into his hands. "How can you and Mama be okay with doing intimate stuff when… when you know how it affects the Anti-Fairies? When we pair up, so do they. They don't even have a choice. Does that ever bother you?"

At that innocent accusation, Dad's eyes trailed down to the ring wrapped over the middle finger of his right hand. The band was silver, the gem attached to it a tiny emerald. It shouldn't have _really_ been on his hand if he were smarter. That was the ring he'd picked for Mama. Poof had asked his Dad to whisper the story sometimes when he needed happy thoughts to lull him off to sleep. Dad always said he'd begged Mama a million times to switch it for the one he'd proposed to her with - the chewed pen cap he'd stupidly grabbed from his pocket instead of the velvet box that night they'd gone out dancing - but she'd turned right around and slipped it over his finger instead. The cap had been fused magically onto a simple ring of metal forever after. _"This will always remind me how much you love me,"_ she'd supposedly told him as he stammered and flushed. _"And I hope that me giving you back your emerald one will always make you think of how much I love you."_

"I love Wanda," Dad said simply, feeding her the bite of pie at last. "That's just how it is. Anti-Cosmo has to deal with that."

"Mmf," Poof mumbled, slouching against one hand. He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at a tangle he hadn't quite brushed out.

"Is something bothering you?" Mama asked, raising a spoonful of soup to her lips.

"Pfft. You mean, besides the fact that all the drones at this party are setting off my raging gyne hormones?"

She smiled. "Besides that."

Poof pressed at the skin above his eye, practically peeling his eyelid back into his forehead. He let go. "Were either of you guys ever friends with a gyne when you were growing up?"

"Uh…" Dad tapped his fork against his chin and glanced at Mama. "Does Juandissimo count?"

"No, sweetie."

"Okay! Then nope." He poked happily at his biscuit. Poof stared at the shadows of ice cubes floating in his golden cup. His fingers tightened in the tablecloth.

"All right. Maybe I shouldn't say this at the dinner table, but Finley was talking to me about gyne and drone things last night, and I have a question. Would you guys think it's weird if I told you I literally always get bored while watching video clips of insects crawling all over each other?"

Dad choked on his biscuit with a startled laugh. Shielding his mouth with his fingers, he managed, "Where do you kids find that stuff nowadays? Uncle Schnozmo used to get me to draw pictures of bugs hugging back when we were little!"

"It's… usually stimulatory for Fairies," Mama said carefully. She mashed her potatoes with the tines of her fork in both directions, three times each, before she actually took a bite. "Some people find themselves more affected than others. And of course, it generally, ah, helps if the insects you're watching match the ones you share genetics with."

Poof dropped his hand from his cheek and straightened up. "So it's really a thing? People actually use that stuff to get in the mood? I always thought it was a metaphor, or everyone was exaggerating. I mean, Hiccup watches bat courtship videos while he cooks like every day he's out front, and I just thought he was kidding when he said they're like soap operas. Now it's just gonna be weird to hear it. Oh geez, it's gonna be so weird. _Uggghh…"_ He shook his head, flexing his fingers around his plate. "What's wrong with me? Watching insect retinue videos just doesn't _do_ anything for me. I like drones, but I don't wanna preen them, y'know? Is that an option? It's like, I couldn't even form a single preening fantasy I liked in my head. Even when I tried. I was okay giving licks if my imaginary drone was into it, but I didn't want it the other way around. That's what I was up all night thinking about: Preening's kind of weird and sweaty and gross. I don't really wanna do it."

Mama sipped her soup again, tapping her fingers on the edge of the table. "It sounds like you've done a lot of thinking lately. And that's why you're so fidgety tonight?"

 _"Tch."_ Poof wrung the edge of the tablecloth in his hands and shrank into his wings. "Not totally. Um, there's something else I wanna say too. I'm just gonna dive right into it and pretend I'm not freaking out, okay?" His fist clenched the ball he'd made with the cloth. "See, the thing is, Goldie's kind of expected to cons… consum… Basically, she's supposed to sleep with her 'primary partner' tonight, and she… she asked me to, uh… do it with her. So, um. I s-said I'd have to talk to you guys about it first. Um, yeah."

Mama grasped the backs of Dad's knuckles and squeezed. "Poof… the last thing in the world Cosmo and I would _ever_ want to do is come between you and your happiness."

Dad coughed into his fist, then glanced away with one finger tugging at his collar. "Y'know, Wanda and I weren't married the first time we did that, either. But technically, there was all this politics stuff with Anti-Cosmo pushing us together because he wanted an heir, so, uh… We get it, Poofster."

The nervous expression clamped itself on his face. His fingers clenched in his hair. "Ahahaha… What? You're serious? You're like, okay with that?"

"Fairies mate for life, Poof," Mama murmured. "If you and Goldie want to give your souls away, then that's your decision to make."

Poof shifted his gaze back and forth between them. They exchanged a glance, then nodded at each other, and at him again. No. No, this couldn't be happening. They supported this? For crying out loud, he was barely 160,000! He was still in high school! This _couldn't be happening._

His core thudding in his forehead, Poof dropped his eyes to his soup bowl and clenched his hands in his lap. "I don't want to do it," he whispered. "If it's my choice, can I make that one?"

Both his parents blinked in unison. Dad blinked twice. "You don't want to?" Mama asked. "Well, that's fine, but uh… We meant it when we said we'd be okay with it. We know how much you like her."

"I DO like her, a lot, but I just… I…"

Dad bobbed his head. "Sure, you're young, but we understand how crazy good it feels to be young and in love. Wanda and I've talked a lot, and we'd rather give you our blessing to be together and still get to be a part of your lives, and not have you guys run away from your families like we did when we were kids. We love and accept our big, goofy, freckle-y son, no matter what he does."

Poof ran his tongue across the gap between his front teeth. "Ohhh, geez. Oh geez. Uh. Erm. Mama? Dad? There's something I need to tell you, about me and Goldie. See, we kind of already _did_ do it once. Sleep together. I mean, we weren't asleep. We were awake. Blitzing."

"We know," they chorused, their eyes softening.

 _"What?"_ Poof flopped back in his seat and threw his hands up. "Aren't you ever going to let me surprise you? Like, ever? Come on! I was _really_ good at keeping that secret. How'd you find out?"

Dad shook his head, smothering a giggle in his tie. "Poof, let's talk about the changes that happen to pheromones when you stop being a virgin."

"Dad, gross! I'm still eating."

"When a gyne loves a damsel very much-"

"Noooo!" he whined, his wings fluttering up. He gripped the table's edge. "No…"

"Poof," Mama said suddenly. She set down her fork. "Are you okay?"

"Me? N-no."

"You're crying. Can we help? What do you need?"

"Oh geez, here we go again," Poof hiccuped, covering his eyes. Were people staring at them? Didn't know, didn't really care. "This is crazy. Goldie's okay with me sleeping with her, her mom's okay with me sleeping with her, Daxton's okay with me sleeping with her, you guys are okay with me sleeping with her, so what's MY problem? I already did it once; this shouldn't freak me out so much. At least this time, I'll actually remember doing it when it's over…"

Dad and Mama looked at each other again. Then Dad leaned across the table, clenching the edge with his fingertips. He lowered his voice. "Poofster? Do you want to go home?"

Poof blinked, groping for the word. "H-home?"

"Poof, we can go home right now. You don't have to explain why you want to. Do you want to go home?"

Whimpering, Poof shook his head and pulled his hair into his eyes. Dad raised both eyebrows.

"Okay, that's fine. Do you want to stay here?"

Poof shook his head again.

"What do you want?" Mama asked softly. Reaching forward, she tucked a wild scrap of hair behind his ear. "You can talk to us if you want to, sport, or you can choose not to, if it's too hard right now. Take your time. We're right here, and we'll listen to as much or as little as-"

"I never told you it happened because I _don't remember!"_

Brief silence fell over their table. Poof shoved the heels of both hands against his mouth and screamed a muffled noise. Maybe people stared at him? Yes? No? His hands dropped to his lap.

"Th-the first time Goldie and I blitzed, I mean. I mean, she says it happened? And like, I kind of remember doing it? Like it's real fuzzy, but I remember _when_ it was, like on the calendar, but I don't remember where we were, or taking my clothes off, or how it even went at all. I-isn't that funny?" The tears spilled over. Poof reached up to catch them in his palm. His entire body began to shake itself apart. "Ha… ha… I was so high on peppermint, I barely even remember anything. Isn't that weird? I definitely don't remember saying 'Yes.' But I mean, I did, right? Goldie wouldn't… she would never… if I didn't say 'Yes.' I just don't remember saying it. Isn't that _hilarious?"_

"Poofster," Dad began.

"But it's not a big deal, right?" His voice lifted in pitch, fingers curling tighter. "I mean, I've known her ever since we were kids, and we've always been friends, and I'm dating her, and she loves me, so it's okay, right? We used all the protection and everything, somehow. I didn't get pregnant or get any diseases. I know I kissed her, and she said they were the best kisses we'd ever had, so I must have liked it, I guess. I don't know? Nothing bad happened, so why can't I get _over_ this? Why do I just waste all my time and money on peppermint? Me and Goldie are still friends- I'm not mad at her. Should I be mad? I don't know, I don't know. All I know is that I'm a fairy, and I already had stupid sex with her once, and- and fairies mate for life a-and that means I'm _never going to love anybody ever again_ , so why should I even think about breaking up with her- _"_

"No, no, Poof-" Mama's hand flew to her mouth. "Poof, you can still love someone else again!"

"You _hate_ me," he sobbed, flattening his ears. Searing magic rippled through his blood. "Why did I get myself in that situation? Why did I take so much peppermint? I'm stupid, I'm an idiot, I can't even be mad at her because I gave the wrong signals, _why am I like this?_ You guys hate me! You're mad at me. Oh geez, I hate myself…"

Mama squirmed in her seat, her hands clenching and unclenching, but Dad rested his head on his folded arms and never broke eye contact. "Poof? I'm not mad, okay? Wanda's not mad either. We want to help you. We don't hate you."

"Yes you _do!"_ Poof was in the air now, covering his mouth. His wings whirred. "Look at me! I'm just a big, stupid idiot!"

Maybe people looked over at them? Maybe not?

"Good- we love idiots in this family. I _really_ love you. Even if I did hate you, I'd still love you more than I hate you. I really, really love you, Poofster."

"Huh?"

"It's okay to be angry. You can be mad if you want to. Take your time. Do you want to talk about it?"

It took a few seconds, but Poof settled down in his chair again. He gripped the underside of the seat with both hands. "Y-yeah. I'm not mad at Goldie. I was never mad. Just kinda disappointed, you know? I wanna talk with you guys."

"Okay. Do you want to go home?"

Poof shook his head, splattering his hair.

"Okay, neat. Is it okay if we talk right here, then?"

"I think so? I want to, i-if you're not embarrassed."

Mama actually did look a little uncomfortable, but to her credit, she kept her attention on him; she never was as good at calming him down as Dad was, which was probably his own fault for being such a difficult baby. Dad nodded, smoothing his wings against his back. "Sure, okay. We can stay here while we talk. What do you want to say?"

"I don't know, I don't know." Poof covered his ears, squeezing his eyes shut. He ruffled his curls with his fingers. "I don't hate Goldie. I'm not really mad at her. I think she thought I said 'Yes' and that I wasn't as high as I was. I don't know if I'm even allowed to be mad at her, because I think I probably liked it? Everything was in slow motion. I can't remember exactly what happened. I know I was on peppermint. Most of it's fuzzy." He inhaled through his nose. "I don't even know where we were. Out in the grass? The dugout on the saucerbee field? The castle? Her dorm? My dorm? I don't know. I just remember sugaring up and asking her, 'Isn't it weird how one day, someone just decided we should count things? And then we got a number system out of it?' I remember that. That's the part I remember. Freakin' dust, I must've been so high. What came after that? Ha… I have no idea! I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Why don't I know? I can't remember. I can't remember anything. Was it even the peppermint, or was it just me? Did I just forget because I'm stupid? I'm so stupid, I'm so stupid, I hate myself, I just wish I was smart like you and Dusty, Mama-" His stammering turned to heaving gasps that wracked his body like slicing scissors.

"Poof?" Instantly, Dad was on his side of the table. Mama bolted after him, but Dad got there first. He flung his arms around Poof's shoulders, smushing his head against his chest. He brought his chin down on Poof's head. Poof squirmed, trying to push him off. Dad's arms loosened, but his hand kept moving up and down between his wings. "Hey, hey. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. You're okay. It's okay. It's Daddy and Mommy. We love you, Poofster."

Wouldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. Poof tried to take deep breaths- he really did try. But with the air tasting dry and dirty and his jittery nerves going all over the place, it took several minutes before he calmed himself down again. Sweat stuck his hair flat against his forehead. His neck was sweaty too. Yeah, ew, his armpits were probably so gross right now. Poof buried his face in Dad's shirt, crumpling his tie with his fist. His wings rattled. Hiccuping, he rubbed his eyes again.

"Dad? Are you mad at me for still taking peppermint? I tried to quit. I promise, I really tried to."

"I'm not mad, Poof. You're okay, and I love you."

"That's good," Poof whispered, closing his eyes. He wound his dad's tie around his wrist. It was cool and familiar in his hand. _"Hff, hff…_ I guess I do remember bits and pieces of what came after the counting thing. I remember telling Goldie she was beautiful. I remember her giggling. I remember thinking it was such a blitzing brilliant idea to hang out alone. I remember the way her shirt was way too big on her and the way it hung when she leaned over me… I just don't remember saying 'Yes.' I must've took too much peppermint, maybe I just plain forgot, I'm such an idiot, I'm such an idiot-"

"Hey." Dad tousled the back of Poof's hair with his hand. "We love you, Poofster. We're going to help you. You're going to be okay soon."

Was he? Poof bit his lip. "M-mostly I just remember the peppermint part. I knew I was taking a ton, but I always take a ton, y'know? I didn't know I'd get up the next day without my _clothes_ on." His hands clenched. "Dad- Dad, I didn't _mean_ to sleep with her! Or maybe I did? Maybe I really wanted to and maybe I said 'Yes' and just forgot? I don't know, but you have to believe me! I'm sorry. I know I should've told you, but I just got so scared you and Mama were gonna find out we did it, so…"

Dad didn't quite stifle his snicker. "Really? That's funny. You're telling me this even though you're scared? Why would you be scared of me? I'm the coolest dad ever. You can tell me anything, and I'll never love you any less."

Well, that was true. Not a lot upset his Dad, except for when his car got dinged or he was in one of his depressed mood swings. Poof laughed without a trace of humor and snuggled deeper into his chest. His wings drooped. "Yeah… I was more scared of you guys finding out we did it _and_ kept it a secret than I am about you finding out we did it in the first place. I'm sorry I got scared. I should have told you right after it happened. Please don't be _too_ mad…"

"Poof." Dad pushed back his hair and kissed his forehead. "Hey. The only thing that would make me mad is if you ever stopped loving me as much as I love you."

How much did his dad love him? Poof wasn't sure, especially since he was probably freakin' _furious_ right now and just doing a really good job of hiding it in public. Sniffling, Poof opened his eyes. "Dad, I really want to quit. I just _can't_. I haven't gone eight hours without peppermint since that day with Goldie. Cripes, it's been _years_. Centuries? I dunno; I've been high for most of it. How long's it been? Someone said 10,000 years. Feels like 100,000 to me, and I still can't get over it. Wow, I'm a mess. Idiot." He rubbed his temples in sharp circles. "But it's easy."

"Easy?" Dad asked softly, stroking his hair.

"Uh-huh… When I'm on peppermint, I can forget about what's bothering me." Poof blinked at his tears, but didn't try to wipe them away. His wings jittered. "S-see, the thing is, I just can't stop thinking about Foop and Anti-Goldie. I don't wanna make them do anything they don't want to. That's not fair to them. I wouldn't want Foop to do anything like that to my life if I had to be the one to copy him, so why should I be controlling his life like this? It should be his choice, you know? He sh-shouldn't have to be forced if he doesn't want to."

"No, he shouldn't."

Poof stared at a speck far in the distance, his fingers tight in the back of his father's shirt. "I still like her. I was never mad, just… surprised. Is it okay to feel like this? If… if I just marry her, do you think it'll stop bothering me that I didn't want to do it the first time?"

"We should think about this before we make rash decisions," Mama started to say, but Poof tuned out the rest. Turning his head, he mumbled, "That's how we make the Anti-Fairies deal with it. We seem to think it works out for them okay."


	50. (81) Trying Too Hard

_Summary:_ Betty finally makes her choice, and Gary makes his.

 _Characters:_ Betty, Gary, Pete, Ed Leadly, Hadley

 _Rating:_ T

 _Chronologically Follows / Precedes:_ "Opportunity" / "Grudge"

 _Prerequisites:_ "Solo", "Loyalty", "Opportunity"

 _A/N:_ See also, "Totally Spaced Out"

* * *

 **81\. Trying Too Hard** (Two weeks after the "Opportunity" Prompt)

 _Year of Leaves; Summer of the Last Berry_

* * *

The numbers didn't add up.

And Betty knew her numbers well. Ever since they were kids, she'd been the practical math and science brain to Gary's enthusiastic love for arts and crafts. She'd been helping Mr. Sanderson add up totals since she was still small enough to fit in his lap. Later on, she'd watched over Flappy's shoulder as he worked to pay the same types of bills that had now fallen to her. Math tests were the only ones Crocker had never given her Cs on back in elementary school. She'd painted each and every happy equation on the Learnatorium walls with her own hand. Numbers were her final sanctuary. So the problem here couldn't - and didn't - lie with her.

Phew, this office was stifling. Had been for days, and she and Pete both had the sweatbands around their heads to prove it. They just couldn't afford to run the Learnatorium's air conditioning more than necessary right now. Couldn't afford to plug in fans. How did Flappy ever deal with this place in _December,_ let alone July? Sweaty skin had started sticking to seat cushions within an hour after sunrise. Gary, strangely, didn't seem to mind the heat at all, and in fact he'd even embraced it with delight. But Betty had given up her happy peppy sweater vest a week ago. In fact, she'd even given up the white shirt she normally wore beneath it. If someone wanted to see her, they could see her in her tank top. Typical? Unusual. Rebellious? Deliciously. No point in letting the opportunity go to waste. Now that Flappy wasn't around to tell her and Gary what to do anymore, they could form their own dress code.

And just before Flappy, Sanderson hadn't even bothered to say good-bye before he'd…

Betty shook her head. She rolled the high-backed chair up to her desk until her knees jarred against wood. A framed photo depicting she and Gary sitting outside their apartment building (perched happily on the edge of Alden Bitterroot's famous well with Mr. Sanderson tall and stiff and expressionless behind them) tipped over with a clatter. She didn't fix it. With her chin balanced in her left hand, elbow braced, Betty rifled through the stack of bills to be paid again. Lights. Water. Air conditioning. Bills, bills, bills.

The math remained just as exact the fourth time around. Betty tightened her teeth. Hmph. Elizabeth Lovell did not make mistakes. Not where numbers were concerned. Should she count again? Something here didn't add up at all, but what could it be? And why did her laptop's firewall keep blocking the site for the insurance company she had written down? Strange company, with a URL full of stars and firework symbols. Memorable, but strange.

Betty tapped her pencil against her teeth, then did straighten the picture of herself and Gary. The two of them wore pink and white even then. Oh… They both looked so young, so innocently devoted to their cause. Odd, really, how much could change in just one year. Flappy was gone. It had been a month since he'd retired and left the cherished Learnatorium in the hands of his three faithful employees (Or more specifically, Gary was smugly likely to insist, in the hands of the _two_ employees who poured their sweat and blood into this dorky business seven days a week).

And yeah, it wasn't the worst job around. If you were going to make a living, why not make it from a job where you had the opportunity to entertain and educate little kidlets all day long? Kids were adorable, and they loved learning. Oh, did kids ever love learning! Little monsters after her own heart; Betty could hardly wait to have some of her own. Just a few more years. She could hold out a few more years for a loving partner, a steady job, a beautiful house- and of course, children who would never leave her at the end of the day. Children with questions, children she could bring to the dam or the park or the grocery store, children she could hug and dress and keep forever…

Betty blinked and refocused her attention on the task at hand. At least she hadn't lost count. She never lost count.

Those numbers did not add up.

"It's not possible," she mumbled. One finger twirled around a strand of pale hair. Turquoise- she wanted a turquoise streak in it one of these days. Something rebellious. Funny. She was the boss of a dying business and had no one to rebel against (and wasn't in the position to do so if she had), but it just felt so right to rebel against _something_.

The summer rush of bouncy kids would not last forever. Payments hit hard every autumn, when even the rowdiest of children were happily willing to give school another try. The daycare for babies under the age of five always became their bread and butter then. Yes, this June had been a peak month- a record number even by their standards. But the repair costs for the walls? The refunds to furious parents? The food required to feed all the children in the city for even a small matter of days? The clothes? The dry cleaning? The broken toys and arcade game screens? All those torn books? Her hospital bills?

Why weren't they totally scraping for cash? These numbers _did not add up._

Her gaze wandered across her desk to the next item on her to-do list. Besides the Learnatorium's immediate future (aka endless bills), the distant future demanded attention too. Hopefully it wasn't quite as distant as it seemed. The Learnatorium needed to be sold, and Doug Dimmadome and Ed Leadly had both made offers the moment Flappy and his parents had rolled out of town. Of course, Crocker had been poking his nose around too, but as far as Betty was concerned, if he couldn't buy the place then he had no business being here.

A tap sounded at the office door. Large, soft, gentle. "Come in," Betty called, glancing up from her papers.

The face that peered through the doorway was white, fluffy, and enormous. It was also the face of a polar bear. He tugged at the blue bow tie around his neck. "Mm. Hey. I, uh, just thought you should know that Leadly called the front desk again."

"Thanks, Pete. Tell him I'm in a meeting right now and he can call back after lunch."

Pete didn't move. Betty only realized this after a minute had passed, and she'd skimmed through another bill. When she looked up again, the polar bear brought one large paw to his mouth and coughed into it. "Eee. I can sure try, but I'm not certain Leadly's going to like that. We've pushed him off every day this week."

She frowned. "Yep, that's right. We sure have. _Aaand_ Leadly will have to wait a weensy bit longer. I haven't seen Gary this morning, and I can't do anything without his permission. Ooh, yeah- when he wakes up, send him my way. We need to talk."

"He's just down the hall," Pete said, backing out of the office with a nod.

"Pete?" Betty called after him. He reappeared, head to one side. "How are your burns healing up?"

"Um." He looked down at the chest of his polar bear suit. "Some more Aloe would be nice."

"Check my purse. Behind you, on the door hook."

Pete sighed affectionately and did so. After finding what he was after, he waved farewell. "I'll bring it back after lunch. Thanks, Betty. You're the best. Love."

"Love you too."

The door clicked softly shut behind him. Betty sighed and looked down again, her fingers caught in her hair. These numbers were all wrong. Had Flappy made a final donation out of his own pockets before he'd headed into the world? Officially, the Learnatorium paperwork was still in his name, and he had agreed to keep ties to the place until either Gary or Betty finished the schooling and became licensed to own it completely. But on some level, he'd engaged in a new career and effectively left she and Gary to run things as they will. "Quid pro quo" he'd called it. He'd handle the legalities and pay the occasional visit so long as he didn't have to do the heavy lifting. In return, the place was theirs.

It didn't make sense. None of it did.

 _"Oooh,_ I am in _lo~ove!_ Our love is forbidden, but it bleeds strong indeed! _"_

That was Gary. Somehow. Betty stopped her pen and looked up. "What is he doing out there?" For the first time in months, Gary hadn't come home to the apartment last night. When she'd walked into work today, she'd found him curled up in a ball on the game room couch, perfectly silent with sleep. If "love" was the reason why he'd been out late, it certainly wasn't the reason she'd suspected. Like… ever. Gary wasn't exactly the cooing, romantic type, and if he'd had a date, he definitely would have told her.

 _BAM!_ The door to the office flew open to reveal Gary standing behind it, one leg outstretched in a kick. His arms clutched an overstuffed blue backpack that all but covered the corners of his smirk. "Ahh, Betty, I adore autumn! It's that magical time of year when even I, as much as I hate sugar, can't help but find myself falling head over heels for the candy of my dreams."

Betty's pen dropped from her hand. She didn't pick it up. "Whoa-oh! Someone got his happy peppy back, big time. It's a good look for you. You know I missed it."

He juggled the backpack alongside his grin as though balancing both was child's play and he wanted something else thrown into the mix to keep him on his toes. Y'know. Typical Gary. "You better believe he did! Ooh, Betty- Betty, you'll _never_ guess what I just so happened to finish last night."

Her eyes moved between his backpack and the door. "Uhh… No, I don't think I'll guess, but I can promise you now, I am already way more excited than I should be."

Her desk and Gary's had been pushed together from Day 1 to create one massive face-to-face superdesk. Gary dropped the backpack on his half. Both hands slapped down beside it. With one foot behind him, he shoved his desk chair into the corner of the office (No wheels- he'd insisted he didn't mind if Flappy's padded office chair went to her). It hit the filing cabinet with a soft _thump_.

"Oh boy," she said, staring up at him.

"Thaaaaat's right!" Gary grabbed the backpack's bottom corners and whisked them into the air. A mountain of white sugary balls decorated with tiny crater patterns spilled across her papers. "They said it couldn't be done! They said I was insane! But after three years of dedicated study, I have finally managed to recreate the recipe for the extremely rare, limited-edition fairy funeral candy. AKA, moon cores! Your faaaaaaavorite!"

He wiggled his fingers on "favorite." Betty watched the sugar balls bounce in all directions, including on the floor. There had to be two hundred of them in that bag. Not counting the ones that broke apart on impact. She shook her head in disbelief once, then twice, but she laughed the whole time. "Oh wow, you've certainly been busy. This is nuts! No wonder you kept begging me to stay out of the kitchen this week."

"Aren't they beautiful?" Gary gushed. He jerked open one drawer of his desk and fumbled around inside. "And that's not all. I've been up for two nights straight rehearsing for a thing. So yesterday, I finally decided to splurge and get something I've always wanted. Feast your eyes!" Before Betty could reply, he fanned out three paper DVD envelopes with the title _Aladdin_ scrawled across the flaps in three different colors. "Ta-duh! I know, right? I bought them all. I've never seen the second two movies before. Now I can give the children we watch over all the privileges and representation I never had at their age." The DVDs fell to the desk. Gary dabbed a tear from one eye with the hem of his sweater vest. "I'm so happy. We could watch them right now. Ooh, do you want to watch them now, or when we get home? If you're busy today, I can wait a little longer."

"Are you silly? Duh, I wanna watch! You set it up, and I'll get Pete to help me round up any kids who haven't fallen asleep yet." Betty was on her feet a flash later, one arm raised to sweep all the papers off her desk and into the bin on the floor; what fun, what fun…

… but she stopped. Oh. Oh. Her legs collapsed like a folded accordion, dragging her back down to her chair. Betty plopped her cheeks into her hands.

"Uh. I can't. I mean, I shouldn't… I just can't. Not today. Not for a while. Sorry."

"Soon, though. Tell me when." Gary tossed one of the sugar balls into the air and caught it in his mouth. The thing was the size of a ping-pong ball, and he probably almost choked to death on it. Not exactly safe, not exactly healthy, but hey- He was happy, right? She couldn't just smash his excitement now. Let him have his fun. Even sugar was okay in moderation. Sanderson hadn't taught her that, and neither had Flappy, but you learned to pick up these things on your own.

Gary held a second moon core up to her lips. Betty did not take it. Still crunching through his own, Gary gave the sugar ball in his hand a coaxing shake. Betty leaned her head away. Placing her pen against his wrist, she pushed his hand down. "No thanks. I gave up sugar when I was nine. Remember?"

"What?" Gary's smile fell a thousand yards. His fingers clenched three moon cores in his palm. White crumbs sprinkled the files on her desk. "But… they're moon cores. Only handed out at funerals. You love these."

"Thanks, Gary. I really appreciate it. I'll save a few for later, but I have a dentist appointment in two weeks, and Dr. Bender will never let me hear the end of it if I get a cavity. Hey, aren't you broiling in that sweater? I mean, we can turn the air conditioning back on if we really need to. I don't want you to overheat."

"Ahaha!" Gary flapped one of his hands at her and glanced over at the window. "You know me. Stuff me in an oven like this place, and I'm on fire… At getting things done, that is. Ooh, and I reserved tickets for the kids' pageant down at the theater next weekend! It's gonna be _tight!"_

 _Please never try to use that word like that again._ And also, _Crap._

"Um." Betty bit her lip. "That sounds awesome, Gary, but Pete and I just started trying to make plans yesterday. We were really hoping to visit his family. In Nevada."

"Ah." Gary nodded, and shrugged the evident disappointment off like a fish. "Well, that'll be fun too! I've been dying to meet this famous Granny Ma of his. From the sound of it, she can whip a mean stitch in a piece of cotton."

She sighed, but it was a sigh of amusement. Typical Gary, clueless and bumbling sweetheart that he was. "Whoa there, cool your jets, bucko. See, here's the skivvy. Pete and I were thinking we might go just the two of us, for just two nights. You know, for meet-the-family-of-the-guy-you've-been-dating reasons? But I promise, you and I can video chat before bed so we can catch each other up like we always do."

He _tsk tsk_ ed and crossed his arms. "That's fair. In that case, I volunteer to stay behind from this trip. Aww, but you two are so goshdarn _cute_ , and I shall miss you a lot. And so, I shall embark on a quest to find someone else to give these tickets too. Someone worthy enough to deserve such a gift. Maybe Talon."

Talon was one of Gary's… _other_ friends. Betty didn't know much about him since he ran with a different crowd, like his name might suggest, but she knew that Talon had the only motorcycle in town capable of putting Gary's to shame, and sometimes when she and Pete had date nights, Gary would call the guy up and ask if he could drop by so they could tinker around together. Funny, how even after a long day of rushing about Camp Learnatorium, he just never grew exhausted with arts and crafts.

He tipped his head, green eyes all a-sparkle. "Have fun, though. Jealous! Send me tons of pics, and try to score some great new recipes while you're there. I'm sure the food will be top crown."

"Yeah, for sure! I'll take some good ones. Although I doubt I'll find any desserts unique enough to appease your desires, O baking master." She glanced at the moon cores for emphasis. Gary chuckled and gave his hand a modest flick.

"Aw, I'm not really as well-read as you think I am. You're bound to turn up something I don't know about. But thanks!"

"Yeah. Yeah. Of course." Betty slid her pen along her desk. "It's nice to see you this morning. You know, I was really worried when you didn't come home."

"Really worried, huh?"

His words were completely innocent, his face as gentle and friendly as it always was, but Betty winced at the thought that stung her heart most: _Oh, boy. How can I actually look him in the eyes and tell him I was worried, when I didn't even come back to look for him?_ She'd had excuses. She couldn't remember what they were.

"Well, yeah. I wish those kids hadn't broken your phone. I wanted to call you. Are you okay? You look like you didn't get a wink of sleep." Despite his high energy level, Gary's eyes were sunken and lightly underscored with gray bags. She stiffened. "Oh crap, did you accidentally join another bike gang?"

"Oh, no. Ugh." First, Gary lifted away his graduation cap (He'd even slept in that thing). Then he pushed his cropped hair back with one hand. The cap fell into place again. "No, you're right. I really didn't. Didn't get very good rest, I mean. I was here _all night_ rehearsing. Finally called it quits at five in the morning and slept in the game room. A three-year-old hit me with a maraca as a wake-up call. What time is it?"

She checked the plastic watch she'd won from a box of cereal as a kid and never parted with. "Almost noon."

Gary's arms seized, his fingers splaying. "Shoot! I was supposed to sanitize the ball pit during Singing Time. Wouldn't want anyone getting pink eye on us!"

"Relax." Betty smiled and gestured for him to sit down (if he chose to retrieve his seat from where he'd kicked it, that is). "It's Saturday. Since Pete was here, I asked him to do it for you."

"Well, how about that?" Gary murmured, twisting halfway around to follow her waving hand.

"He's sweet. What were you rehearsing?"

"Ah…" Gary fully turned his back. Shoulders high. Mechanically, he brought his chair over to his desk. "You know. Just one of my new songs. 'World of Pink.'" He shrugged. "'Demo Version.' For now. It's not easy. You know I'm not as good at rhymes or dancing as you are."

"Do I know that one?"

"Probably not. It's new. It starts like this." He cleared his throat. _"_ _I was raised in a world where gray mixed with pink / by a man so unfeeling he taught me to think._ And towards the end it kinda goes into, _I'm happy, I'm hopeful, I'm thankful, I'm patient; I'm cheerful, forgiving, accepting, and laughing, in my world of pink, not gray…"_ He shrugged. "Buuut, I'm still working on it. Something's not fitting right with the flow in the middle, but I'm getting it. I wanted a line in there like, _Will they believe_ _I'm not into you?_ but I'm not sure if it'll make the final cut."

"'World of Pink'…" Betty nodded. "I like it. Well, it sounds like you're making progress. Don't worry if it isn't perfect. You can always reprise it later."

"I'll keep that in mind. Ooh, and also? Just this one last thing? Okay, I know it's super early to be planning, but I went ahead and booked us time in our schedule to visit that new farm across the hills right before Halloween, just you and me. I made sure it had a petting zoo, a corn maze, and _everything_. Even a mountain of old grain kernels! Just no haunted houses. Flappy said he'd work everything out with Pete, so it's cool." With a hum, he sat down and then peered at what she was working on. "So, what have you been up to this week?"

Betty glanced down at her ink-stained fingers. Self-consciously, she adjusted a strap on her tank top. "Bills. Paperwork. This whole shindig is illegal, you know."

"Huh?" Gary jerked up his head. "What? I'm not planning anything illegal. Why would you say that?"

She set the end of her pen on a stack of papers she'd been studying and pushed them over the pixel-thin gap that divided her desk from his. Moon cores rolled and bumped against each other. Gary sat down, his shoulders awkwardly stiff. "Having just three of us to manage all these kids," she explained. "That's not legal even in this backwards city. Our caretaker-to-child ratio is sort of frowned on. Losing Flappy certainly didn't help; he was a natural at entertaining groups. We need to hire more employees if we don't want to get shut down this year, but I just don't see how this crummy place can make ends meet for much longer."

"Things have a strange way of working out," Gary insisted. He scratched his ear. "I'm sure it'll all be fine. We'll have enough money for everything we need, trust me."

Betty studied him between glances at the stack of bills (or what she could see of them beneath the candy balls and sugar heaps on her desk, anyway). She knew that scratch. He was trying too hard to avoid contact with her eyes. "Hmm… You wouldn't have anything to do with these numbers not adding up as expected, would you?"

"Me?" His scratching picked up. _Scritch scritch scritch scritch scritch._ "Haha! Ah, well, since you asked me so directly, I _miiight_ have slipped a little something extra into our bank account, Lizzie. A few more dollars a day keeps the legal department away, hey? Wouldn't you say?"

"Gary, we've been over this." Ignoring the squeaky baby-talk voice that always flared up more when he was nervous, Betty braced her steepled fingers against her forehead. "You can't dip into your personal college funds to keep fishing this drain out of the gutter. One day, we're both going to grow up and move on. How are you going to live?"

He shook his head. When he started to lean back, his chair squeaked. It was a long squeak, like the kind you might expect to hear right before your furniture snaps and you get dumped on the ground. Gary stopped pushing against it. "I don't see the Learnatorium as a drain, Betty. I see it as my second home. It's something worth saving."

"It's a drain," she told him flatly. She pushed a strand of hair from her eyes (Turquoise- it so badly needed turquoise).

Betty sighed.

"Gary, can we talk seriously? I mean, about money? I think we're trying too hard to keep afloat a business that isn't going to pay us back for it. This place isn't going to bring in a ton of dough this fall. A lot of parents are really upset about the way their kids were treated this summer. Not that it was our fault or anything. I don't mean to pin blame, but…"

"Betty," he whined, a smile curving across his lips. "Hold onto it for me? We'll figure out how to make this place profitable if we work together. We've had so many good times here for years, and we've always made it through the ups and downs before."

"Well, maybe, but…" For a moment, Betty stared at the bills. Too many bills. Bills that could swallow, bills that could kill. Bills that could yank everything away from her in a snap if she didn't make them _perfect._ She rubbed her arm. "We've always had Flappy's help before."

"And he taught us well, don't you think so? Parents and guardians always dream of their dependents taking over after them, using all the knowledge they've been taught."

Betty shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, we're basically just teenagers. We can't do this. Flappy couldn't expect us to. With all the angry parents, next year doesn't promise to be a lucrative one anyway. I really think we should sell now before we go under, and then move on with our lives, like Flappy did."

"Give us a chance, Betty. We can do it. You know, I believe in our ability to push through our trials."

"Mr. Leadly's made it abundantly clear that he's interested in buying. So has Dimmadome, but I don't know how much longer either of them will wait for us." Betty picked up an unopened envelope, then set it down again. "If they sense we're desperate, they'll force us to sell this place at lower than it's worth. This is our peak moment. I'm telling you, this summer ruined us. We're going under next year, tops."

Gary took a handful of dry erase markers from the wire cup on his side of the superdesk. He started connecting them into a staff. "Ooh, yeeeaaah, but I'd feel so _gross_ if we just sold it. It's only been a month. Flappy trusted us. We should hold onto his pride and joy for at _least_ a year without him. We should at least try. You know what?" He reached for another marker, then jerked up his head. "Hey, I know! I've got an idea. If you're tired of this place just being a daycare, why don't we turn the Learnatorium into a full-on community center?"

What?

Oh no. Ohhh no. Gary had that absent gleam in his eye, the thoughtful flutter in his fingers, that adorably goofy one-sided quirk to the smile on his lips. Before Betty knew it, her nails were drumming on the table.

"Hmm. A community center. You mean, for hosting kids' parties? And local after-school clubs and hobby groups? And maybe a dance floor, or a banquet hall with a stage on one end?"

"Now you're getting it! We could finally get the bingo hall out of the elementary school. Ooh, and we'll keep food storage, quilts, inflatable rafts, and hundreds of cupcake liners in the basement in case of emergencies. I mean" - Gary clipped the last marker into place with a smile - "You never know when a giant lizard might eat a few office buildings or accidentally step on a couple dozen homes. We could be heroes, rushing to the rescue whenever disaster strikes! We have all this power in our hands. Wouldn't it be wonderful to do something with this place that could really help the town?"

Betty's hand moved from her forehead to her ear. She tucked her hair away. With a sigh, she picked up her pen again and tapped out the tune of an old forgotten song against the edge of her desk. _Tuuuuun… tun tun tun tun TUN tun._ "It sounds wonderful, but it could never work."

"You really think so?" Gary leaned back in his chair again, stretching his tower of markers towards the ceiling tiles. It arched like a blade of plastic grass. He pinched his tongue between his lips, fighting to keep his arm steady. "Why not?"

"Because you're still eighteen, and I'm only two and a half months older. We can't do this. Not by ourselves. It's too hard. It just couldn't work." Betty shook her head. "No, the community center idea's out. We need to go about this logically. So. Who do we want to sell to? Dimmadome, or Leadly? And how soon can we get this done? Flappy insisted on leaving the Learnatorium to both of us, so we're both going to have to agree on this."

"We could set up indoor displays of insect wings and animal tracks that we pair with an outdoor summer camp program six weeks a year," he wheedled. "And an art room with a row of easels, and a kiln for pottery classes too. A safe place for children to hang out after school and finish their homework if their parents aren't home and bullies are guarding the streets…"

Oh, drat. Drat, drat, drat. Her nails drummed again, and she fought against the nervous quickening of her breath. Now wasn't the time for over-analyzing, and she wished the rest of her brain would shut up and figure that out already. "Mm. I mean, it _does_ sound like it would be wonderful. Dimmsdale doesn't have anything like it. Ironically, the Learnatorium is the closest thing this town's ever had to a community center to begin with."

"A swimming pool, a rock climbing wall, racquetball courts," he listed on one hand, still reaching for the ceiling tiles. Even his eyebrows were smirking. Betty rolled her eyes.

"You know what's frustrating, Gary? You're absolutely impossible to reason with. I don't know why I even try. I'm serious- I don't think I've made you change your mind about anything, _ever_ , in your _life_. I don't know why I keep letting you talk me into these things. Half the time I regret it, and I spend the other half terrified that I will soon enough."

Gary chuckled. He lowered the marker stack and broke it in half. "See, you love me."

She ignored the comment and smoothed out a dog-eared corner of one bill. Steady, though her fingers shook. She spent too many seconds weeding her actual desirable thoughts from the anxious swirl inside her brain, then said, "Okay, well. We'll figure out what to do with the Learnatorium after lunch. I need to think things through. Don't let this 'taking money from your college fund' thing happen again." When Gary opened his mouth to protest (Probably another of his terrifying speeches about how he would be totally happy to drop all his online classes and throw himself fully into the daycare business for good), Betty pointed to the papers she'd given him. "But none of this solves our current problem with the student-to-teacher ratio. Flappy's gone, and we need to hire more employees super fast. What we're doing isn't legal, and if Leadly or Dimmadome hear about it, they'll try to squeeze us out." She picked up a short stack of papers. "Did Pete ever hear back from that girl at the gas station? She was wavering."

 _"_ Wouldn't he have come straight to you if he had, and not bother telling me?"

Betty stopped rifling through the bills. Oh no. What-? Oh no. Did he just-? Oh no. She looked up. Gary instantly dropped his gaze to his lap, clutching three markers in each hand. Oh no.

"He hasn't told me," he finished, lamely.

The bills fluttered back to the desk. Betty leaned forward. "Wait. Uh… Is there something going on I should know about? Have you two been fighting? Did Pete accidentally hurt your feelings? Or more importantly, your limbs? If he did, I'm sure he didn't mean to. I can bring it up with him."

"No, no!" Gary lifted both hands to his chest, palms facing out. Markers spilled into his lap. "I like Pete just fine! Sure, he's absopositilutely huge, but he's such a gentle, cuddly guy, heh heh. An asset to our team, don't you think so?"

Betty hesitated. She already knew the answer, but asked the question anyway. Her fingers crawled across the desk towards several of the moon cores. She could - should - drop a few of them in the dusty bowl of peppermints and foil kisses she'd inherited from Flappy. At least then Gary would see she appreciated his hard work, even if she didn't want all that straight sugar rotting her teeth. Her hand closed around one sugar ball. "No, seriously. Is there a problem I should know about? What do you have against Pete?"

"Not a restraining order," he said cheerfully, and even threw in a wink to assure her he was just joking around. She hoped he was just joking around.

"Pfft." She was smiling before she could stop herself. "You're a goof. Be nice to Pete. He may only work part-time, but he's still one of our crew. Hey, it's almost noon. Did you take your meds this morning?"

Gary opened his mouth, then closed it again. He blinked. "Uh-oh. I never picked up a new bottle."

"Check my purse. Behind you, on the door hook."

"Aw, thanks, Betty. You've always got my back. It's for reasons like this that we make such an amazing team." Gary clicked his marker staff back together and used it to hook her purse beneath the strap. The markers broke again beneath the weight of it. Unsurprising. Gary got up and checked her purse by hand. Then, spinning the canister of Vitamin D-deficiency pills between his fingers, he tilted back his head. "Of course, I need to take these with food…"

Betty reached for the one-a-day calendar on his desk and swiveled it around. "I think it's my turn to grab lunch. I'll go as soon as I finish with this section I'm doing."

"No need!" Gary flipped the pill bottle to his other hand and dropped it in his pocket. He sat the corner of his desk, one leg dangling. "You pay bills, and I'll head out. Walking is both good fun and healthy exercise, and the weather's so nice out. What do you feel like today?"

"Besides super duper?"

He laughed. "To eat, Betty."

Betty leaned back in her chair, tapping her nails again. "Hmm. That Extreme Veggiedanger place was good last week. I want to try their potato cubes, with an accessory fruit platter on the side."

"Oh, yes! Now, they knew how to blend a smoothie." Gary sprang up again. "And they do have the finest carrot cake in town. That is, if you're up for a little something sweet for dessert. Not that I'm not abso _lute_ ly positive you're sweet enough already. Ahahaha…" His palm went to his cheek. He looked her up and down, pursing his lips. His shoulders lifted, then sagged again. Yet, the goofy smile she'd long known to trust stayed latched in place. "Ah… Did Pete want me to pick up anything for him?"

He fizzed with the same boundless energy he'd held last spring, before every adult who'd ever looked out for them had dumped them in the road and everything changed. As though that didn't even hurt him, that he wasn't stinging and desperate and trying too hard to secure his future all on his own. The way she was. He wasn't like her at all. Gary beamed at her as she gazed back at him, until his smile slowly started to fade.

"Betty? Is something wrong?"

She adjusted the brass plaque on her desk that spelled out her name. Her maiden name. As far as she knew, anyway. Her only tie to it was the fact that Sanderson had told her it was hers. She couldn't even remember the parents that paired with it. Without looking up again, she asked, "Did you already ask Pete where he wanted to go for lunch, or did you come straight to me so you could avoid having to coexist in the same room as him?"

Gary's silence lasted a beat too long. He said, "I was already in here, so I just thought I'd ask…"

"You know, he does work with us. You can't try to ignore him forever."

"True, true!" He thrust a finger in the air, his face a mask of seriousness. "All you say is very true, Elizabeth. Nor can I take the guy seriously when he refuses to take off the polar bear mask to have a decent conversation. It's one thing to entertain the kids with it. To still wear it during naptime on a slow summer Saturday is just plain creepy. I don't think I've seen his real face for a year, at least."

Betty tried to maintain a straight expression, but it was difficult not to let just a little smile slip when her normally-grinning friend looked so alert and urgent. "Oh, Gary. You have to be patient with him. He'll take off the mask when he's ready."

Gary grabbed the edges of his desk. One knee went into his chair. He leaned so far forward, the tassel on his cap swung forward to bump his nose. "He wore the polar bear suit to his _job interview_ , Betty! In last year's summer heat, and even _I_ broke a sweat then! It's not natural."

With a smirk, she leaned her chin on her hand. "Right now, he needs encouragement. You can be supportive of him a little longer, can't you?"

"He could have been a brown bear," Gary spluttered, throwing his hands in the air. He turned his back. "A black bear! A panda! But no. He applied for this job in a polar bear suit, in June. And he got it, too! What level of self-confidence?"

"Heh heh." Betty ducked her mouth behind her fingers. "What can I say? Flappy thought he had personality."

"A sun bear! A koala!"

"Caaareful now, manticore. The way you talk almost sounds like you're jealous."

Gary paused, glancing back in her direction. Betty raised both her eyebrows, smile fading. She and Gary didn't lie to each other. They were closer than that. Right? I mean, sure, she kind of _had_ been talking about plans with Pete over several lunch breaks that she _hadn't_ gotten around to telling Gary about yet, but that wasn't _technically_ lying. That was just… waiting for the right moment to bring it up. Really, she and Gary didn't lie to each other about anything, even to spare one another's feelings. Sanderson had raised them that way. They were both completely open communicators, and always had been. Locking feelings inside only led to betrayal and heartache.

He opened his mouth, but just then, there came another knock on the door. Soft, again, as though offered up by a stuffed bear paw. Betty sighed. "I'm sorry, Gary. Is it okay if you hold that thought for a second? Come in!"

It was Pete again, this time with a small girl in one arm who held a bubble wand near her mouth. He hesitated when he saw Gary standing by the desk, as if he wasn't sure whom he was supposed to be addressing. He focused on Betty in the end. "Mm. Sorry to interrupt. I thought you would want to know that Leadly has been trying to reach you all morning."

"I'm in a meeting. Just tell him-"

"-that he can call back after lunch," Gary curtly finished.

Pete glanced between them both. Gary continued staring at him, and Betty nodded. "Right. What Gary said. Thanks."

Pete apologized once more and left again. Together, Betty and Gary listened for the soft pat of his bear paw footsteps down the hall. Then Gary turned his head. "Hey. I have a question."

Betty tasted her anxiety shoot from one to eleven. Years ago, Gary had sensed how nervous the words "Hey, can we talk?" made her feel. He'd changed the way he said it, but now that she'd learned what to expect anyway, it wasn't much better.

"Go ahead," she said. She didn't squeak. Her fingernails curled in. Turquoise nails, like she wanted that stripe through her hair. The color was obnoxious and didn't quite go with any of her clothes, and maybe that's why it was her favorite.

Gary scooped up his backpack, the blue fabric familiar and painful and worn and tearing. When he dropped into his chair, he set the pack in his lap. He hugged it. It crushed against his chest. "You know, I really don't care if you don't like me the way you like Pete. I don't like you that way at all. You're my best friend, and I love that about us."

Betty didn't move.

"Really," he said, reaching for her eyes with his. She heard him push his shoes off his feet. They dropped to the floor. Gary drew his legs onto his chair, folding them so his heels touched in the middle. His socks were always full of holes, blackened in patches as though they'd been scorched. "So, whatever happens now that we're growing up, think about what you really want. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. We're both adults now. I'm happy just knowing you're happy too. Okay? Wherever life takes you, whatever you decide, I want you to follow your heart."

"That's… sweet of you to say."

His eyelids clenched. "But I also need to get something off my chest."

"And you don't mean the bow tie?" she guessed, dropping her gaze to her lap. She pressed her feet together.

"I- I'm just not sure dating a guy who aims to get stuck in a dead-end job of wearing a giant bear costume three days a week is the best financial choice for you," he said, quietly. "If this is what you want, I just need you to be sure you're happy with what you're doing. I'll support you, I promise, Betty. As long as you're _positive_ you want this. I… just wanted to say that. You can count on me. Just, be sure."

Betty stared at the swirls and knots in the wood of her desk until they burned into her brain. "Are you trying to tell me something between the lines?"

He tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

Yes? No? If her legs crossed any tighter, she'd turn into a pretzel. Her breath sucked in and out as though she were gasping through a straw. "Um. Before Sanderson suddenly up and went east… How much money did he leave on your debit card?"

Gary's eyes flickered down. Only for a second. Then they swept back up. He clutched the backpack tighter. "Well, I have more than enough to get me through college, and do anything with the Learnatorium we like. We can keep the place for several more years. A decade, if we want to. There's enough."

Betty gripped the hem of her shirt. _Are you serious?_ Was he even being honest? I mean, he had to be, because he was _Gary_ , but- Well- Enough for school AND total renovations? For a daycare center of this magnitude, no less? Wow. Sanderson had certainly spared no expense.

… Why for him, and not for her?

No. She knew why. Gary had always been Sanderson's favorite. Sanderson's favorite, Sanderson's dad's favorite, uncle's, aunt's, and all his brothers' favorites. If a stranger ever bumped into them in the grocery store, chirpy Gary was their go-to for directions or an extra pair of hands to load things in the car. If the two of them were ever in the newspaper for saving kittens or volunteering at the detention center, Gary was always Dimmsdale's little favorite. Even the goat nuzzled up to him and only shied away from her, as though he radiated physical warmth as well as emotional. Yep. Sweet… sensitive… perfectly darn Perfect McCheery-Perfectson because it came so naturally to him…!

"Betty, don't!"

She hadn't realized her thumbnail was embedded in her arm. She'd raked white lines through her skin, pale against the old pink ones from yesterday. Gary was on his feet, his hand halfway to her shoulder. Betty blinked. Right. Right. Nervous skin-picking habit, one she'd tried to shake off years ago. She forced her hands away, back to her desk. Her knees tightened against her chair. "W-when was the last time you talked to Sanderson?"

He blinked, his eyes still stretched wide. "Not for weeks. But I mean, I've been meaning to, if you'd maybe want to video call…?"

"Oh gosh." She couldn't take her eyes off her hands. "This is all my fault, isn't it? I've been spending too much time with Pete. You're getting jealous, and it's causing problems in the workplace. I never should have started-"

"No." Gary grabbed her hand and slammed it (softly) against her desk. His palm was sweaty, and Betty had the weirdest image pop into her head of him testing the temperature of baby formulas against his wrist. Like this was any normal day. Like they'd done this daycare thing forever, and as if he expected to do it for fifty years more. His fingers tightened. "Betty, you _like_ Pete like that, and not me. I get it. I totally understand what that means, and I am fully supportive. Don't you dare break up with him just because you also happen to be best friends with me."

"But-"

 _But I'm hurting you. But I'm about to hurt you more. But you're feeling so ignored. Like you're not good enough for me. Like I don't want you. Like there isn't anyone there who understands. That's not what I meant. That's not what I meant at all. Please don't hate me. I just… I don't… We can't and could never… I only wanted to…_

"You're so important to me," he whispered. He lowered his head. His tassel slid forward again. "Please don't break up with him because you think I'm jealous. I just want you to be happy. Even if you are dating a polar bear."

 _"Snrk_. He's not a real polar bear. You do know that, right?" Betty forced her super serious face back into position. She inhaled, and exhaled again through her mouth. "And, I mean, of course we always knew you and I were never going to be a thing. Just so we're clear. I hope I never led you on."

Gary rolled his eyes. "Oh, I didn't mind it. After all, I'm a follower, not a leader! Hey, I'm kidding," he added hastily when he saw her blink. He chuckled. "Okay, but you have to admit, we'd be adorable together."

"Oh, shut up. We already are adorable together, you goofball."

He leaned across the desks, lacing his fingers with hers. His eyebrows wiggled. "Oooh! Those are flirting words, Lizzie."

The 'f' word instantly snapped her back to attention. His hand. Her hand. Wrong hand. Betty dropped it. "Uh, hang on. Gary, we're business partners. Even if Pete and I weren't a thing, I could never date you. We have different emotional needs. And you can't do… _this_ anymore."

He sat up. "What? I'm sorry? I was just teasing. You didn't use to mind my teasing this much. I thought we both knew it wasn't going anywhere. What changed?"

His eyes darted off even as he spoke. Betty couldn't look at her hands. Not when they were twitching this way. She let them clench. "Hey. Hey, this all needs to stop. I-it's not fair to you, it's not fair to Pete, and it's not fair to me. Oh, geez." She pushed back her hair again, clamping her pigtails into more of a ponytail. Come to think of it, maybe it was time she changed to a ponytail for good. She already had her heart set on changing everything else, so why not her hair style? Or better yet, why not shave it all into a pixie cut? A pixie cut sounded like something she might like. Maybe something from a dream. Maybe one day. But for now, Betty closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. In. Out. In. Let it all out again. "Actually… This is probably a good time to talk to you about the new ground rules."

"Of course!" Gary sat down again and scooted his chair closer to his desk. "I love rules, and you know me. I'm always all ears. Except when it comes to eavesdropping, because that would be rude."

She didn't want to do this.

She did _not_ want to do this. She was the math brain. The planner. The thinker. Not this… goopy, feely person Gary always seemed to think she was.

True, she could get by all right when it came to comforting hurt kids, and Gary was just a bigger sort of kid. Easy enough. But he was by far the more sensitive one between the two of them. And while she knew him well enough to predict how he would react to the news, it still shook her core to have to hurt him like this.

Betty folded her arms, leaning her elbows against her desk. Her feet switched positions against her ankles. "Gary, you and I have been living together for a long time now."

"Since we were eight," he added helpfully.

"And… Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about that. You know. Living together when we aren't dating."

He shot her a curious look, then swung his backpack to the floor. His fingers crawled across his desk towards a dented moon core. "I totally follow."

No he didn't. Gary didn't always… _get_ things like this. Betty drew in her breath. Her legs crushed the seat of her chair. She dropped her hands to her lap, clasping them between her knees. "And I think that since we're not dating, and we're getting older, you and I need to have some space."

Gary gasped. One hand went to his lips, candy forgotten. "But… You don't mean what I think you mean."

Betty closed her eyes. "I do, Gary."

"Do you? My word!" He braced his weight on his elbows. "After all these years, are we _finally_ moving out of our stinky apartment and getting a real home of our own?"

"Gary."

"What?"

Her eyelids tightened. "No. Not like that."

"What…" Gary's voice grew a little softer. "What do you mean?"

Her hands came together before her nose. Eyes shut. Fingers threaded into one sheet. "Well. See, Pete and I… have gotten serious about our relationship. Lately we've been looking into getting our own apartment."

His mouth opened. Then shut. His eyebrows shot up, blending with the rest of his ginger hair. After ten seconds of silence, he said, "Oh. I didn't know that."

"Listen." Betty softened her voice. "Gary, I really, really think it's best if we sell the Learnatorium now. This is the last good chance we'll have. But I won't force you to do anything you don't want to do. If you want to keep it so badly - turn it into a community center or whatever - I'm willing to sign all my share over to you. Then with your blessing, I guess we'd call it… I'd really like to pack up and move in with Pete as absolutely soon as possible."

 _I'm sorry_. Unsaid. Unsure. Unknown. The clock ticked. One second. At a time. Gary blinked. Four seconds.

Like a flamingo, he folded his arms in slow, gentle motion and leaned back in his seat. "Well, uh… Okay. I mean, if that's what you really want. Pete's a nice guy. I trust he'll take care of you. For however long you stay with him. Um. You'll be okay without me close by?"

Her shoulders eased, but not by much. "I'll be all right. My panic attacks aren't as bad as they used to be. Really, I'm happier now than I've felt in years! And…" Betty tilted back her head. "I'm just really looking forward to getting out of this town. I have a lot of bad memories here."

When she looked down again, she found Gary watching her with a strangled look plastered all over his face. He tilted back his head. "Oh? Do tell."

"Not about you," she assured him, smiling slightly at the thought. Poor, silly Gary. How could he ever think he hadn't been everything she'd needed to lean on when she was younger, when her parents had been stolen away? "Just, y'know… bad memories of _here_. Like when Mr. Sanderson took us on that roller coaster with his friends. Or all those times he just left us in our apartment alone to entertain ourselves. Or when that dog broke in and chased us to the kiddie room. Oh geez, I was totally convinced it would eat all those poor babies! That day _still_ gives me nightmares. We'd have totally gotten fired. Or the memories of how those crazy ten- to twelve-year-olds tied us up last month."

He was staring at her, completely tense and forward. His breathing had turned audible. Betty faltered.

"Um… Gary, Sanderson's gone, Flappy's gone, I've been having trouble in school since the beginning… Except for you and Pete, I just don't feel well-liked here in Dimmsdale. I want to move out and start over. Make new memories. Pete and I have been looking into Brightburg. Real estate is cheap now after the earthquake. Don't worry. We'll stay safe."

Gary was on his feet now. His eyes were saucers, knuckles white against the edge of his desk. Betty stared up at him, bracing herself for tears and choked-up words. But instead of screaming, he chewed his cheek and nodded. "O-of course. That makes total sense. I understand, and I'll be sure to respect your boundaries.

And thank goodness for that. Betty told him so, then clicked the tip back into her pen. "You know, we need to get you a girlfriend."

At that, Gary stuck out his tongue. "Sprinkled muffins, Betty- Not you too. Flappy's been on my case for years. It's not that simple, y'know? I can't afford to have a girlfriend."

"Because you're waiting for me to dump Pete and become available?"

"Not necessarily." He raised his eyebrows, sitting down again. _"But,_ if the two of you do spend money on this apartment of yours and ever part ways because you aren't legally and fully committed with a pair of wedding rings, which I'm just saying could totally happen, you're always welcome to come back and stay with me. I promise; no questions asked. You can keep your key, and I'll make sure your room always stays clean and ready for you. It's just a safety precaution."

"Thanks, Gary," she said, although it was pointless. Pete was too meticulous of a planner to let her go after the two of them had worked so hard to piece together their life plans. They'd picked a temporary apartment, and planned out their design for a small dream home in the distant future. They had the general location in mind, a few schools lined up for the kids, and the job opportunities were promising. The only thing they had left to pin down was the wedding date, assuming the two of them ever decided to make that commitment at all. Which was another thing she'd been meaning to mention to Gary for some time. She crossed her ankles the other way again. "I'm happy now. I really am, for the first time in months. I really do appreciate you looking out for me."

"Of course. I'd do anything for you."

And he meant it, or he thought he did. Betty placed her chin on her hand, pressing her tongue against the inside of her cheek. She wrapped her other hand around her knee. "In that case, I have a favor to ask. We're best friends, and that's _really_ great _,_ but I don't want you to spend your entire life fawning over me. You've got to get out there. Meet other girls."

"I've met other girls," he protested, a thin whine creeping into his tone. Betty resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Barely. Silly boy.

"Other girls who are not five years old. Seriously, who are you even into? You know what's weird? This." Betty lifted her hands, holding them a foot apart with palms facing. She swung them down like twin hammers. "I know your gymnastics team has won state three times in the three years you've been with them, I know you're claustrophobic, I know you own a motorcycle, and I know you love cherry-flavored everything, but I don't know _anything_ about the type of person you're attracted to. In all our years, has this never come up in conversation? How have we seriously never even discussed this?"

"Because despite the fact that I have a wonderful working teenage brain, girls have yet to interest me and I'm starting to seriously suspect my hormones won't kick in until I'm two hundred years old?"

"What?"

"Nothing," he said in the same breath.

Betty blinked, then shook her head. She pushed back her hair. "Hey, you're my best friend. Remember?" She smiled until his gaze flicked away. "Even though I'm hoping to move out, you'll always be my best friend. I just want you to be happy too."

Gary pulled one knee against his chest. "But I don't need to bring another girl into my life right now. I'm not ready for dinners alone with a girl in a fancy restaurant, especially if I have to be out after sunset. I technically don't even own a suit. I'm not ready for a lasting romantic relationship. I just want to hang out with you. And…" His fingers spread apart the _Aladdin_ DVDs on his desk. "You know. Watch movies while we cook breakfast in our pajamas. Eat soy cubes. Go to the gym together. Draw around Alden's wishing well with sidewalk chalk on Saturday evenings when it's warm outside. Dress up like witches for Founder's Day. Corn mazes. Petting zoos. Dancing around while we sing into hairbrushes, you know? I'm…" The word was a struggle. "I'm super-duper glad that you'll be happy moving away with Pete - Don't think I'm not excited for you or that I don't support you in every possible way - but I'll _miss_ all that we used to do together. I'll miss you. I'd hoped we could keep doing our thing for a few more years." He looked up again. "I mean, dating or not dating, I love you, and I love being around you."

"I'd like to keep what we have going too," she told him honestly. She blinked back a teardrop of her own. Just one. Gary was right. When she tried, she actually could pull up some good memories of Dimmsdale, and she _would_ miss him a ton when she moved away.

He was shaking, shuddering, the same way he did when forced into a space much smaller than he was willing to handle that day. "I love you," he blurted. "Um, I guess maybe I don't say that enough, because I didn't want you to take it the wrong way, but, um… Aw, geez, Betty." He clamped one hand against his face, spurting laughs and tears. "You're just so nice for no reason? And just, uh, really, really great, and you were wonderful to live with while it lasted, you know? It's just going to be super, super, super-duper hard to decide if I want a new roommate, or if I need some time to be alone!"

"Maybe you and Talon can live together?" she offered, without a lot of hope. Gary shook his head. A lot. The tassel on his cap whipped back and forth, slapping at his cheek.

 _"No._ Talon doesn't get me like you do. You were perfect for me. And I'm so excited for you- don't get me wrong. I'm just really excited and really concerned at the same time. It's just…" Another nervous giggle. _"Errrrgh._ Oh, this sounds super dumb. I _hate_ trying to explain this. But, um, you just always make me feel like I'm safe, right? And I, uh, loved coming home to that? No worries, no stress, just pure understanding. You liked me just because I'm a _nice person."_

"As opposed to what?" Betty asked, faintly amused. For all his despair and obvious confusion, it was a relief to hear him try and deny any romantic feelings for her.

His eyes shut. Something bobbed inside his throat. "As opposed to a boyfriend. Betty, _that's_ why I can't have a girlfriend. You know that, right? Because- because-" Hands to face, each gasp jumping. "What if when you're gone, no one ever wants me to be their friend again? What if for the rest of my life, girls look at me and- and-" Fingers clenching _, crushing_. "What if they look at me, and I'm not worth it?"

"What?" Betty crinkled her forehead, starting to stand. This was new. Automatically, she reached for a tissue from their box and handed it to him. Gary took it weakly. "Why wouldn't you be 'worth it'? You're the sweetest boy in town. You're sweet, you're a hard worker, you're tall, you're completely adorkable. I mean, just give it a couple years or maybe even months of me not hanging around, and you'll have girls falling all over you, I guarantee it."

He half-screamed a muffled scream into his hand. "But that means kissing, and I _hate_ kisses! I don't want a girlfriend who kisses me." Blurring words- "Kisses are super duper uncomfortable for me, and I just get so nervous. Lizzie- Lizzie, I've never told this to anyone ever before in my entire life, because I just _know_ everyone's going to tell me I'm only like this because of my st-stupid extra chromosome, and maybe that will turn out to be the reason and maybe it won't, but I just _don't want a girlfriend who thinks having the sexy stuff is worth more to her than I'm worth just as an actual human person with feelings!"_

He was yelling. And when he realized he was yelling, his voice tanked.

"Betty, I can be second place to playing sports or a fun hobby or a job, but I can't be second place to kisses. Kisses are like presents, and they have to be given selflessly, okay? Not… not stolen to get something in return."

Huh?

Gary fell back, throwing his head and covering his mouth, like he'd shouted something profane in the middle of a church meeting. His chair rolled slightly closer to the wall, and away from their shared desk.

 _"We've_ kissed," Betty said, quietly. Her cheeks began to heat. Her legs began to jitter. Her mind began to swirl. She tightened her grip on her knee. "I mean, it was years ago, but… You didn't like it?"

He jolted up again, wide-eyed. "Betty, I didn't mean- I shouldn't have brought it up. Please, I'm not trying to come between you and Pete. That's not what I was trying to say. It's just… Whenever you and I kissed, it was, uh, because- because we had to, you know? H.P. was always trying to push us together because he basically wanted grandkids one day, I guess maybe, but after we found out my condition means I can't have any…"

"There were so many kisses," she recalled, weakly. Her toes scrunched. "You didn't like any of them? You faked all that? To try and make me happy? I thought you enjoyed them, but really, you were just grossed out, every time?"

His eyes brimmed over with tears. "You don't remember. Do you?"

Betty bit her lip, briefly. "Just… Okay. Okay. I won't pry into your personal life and stuff like that. But could you answer just one thing for me, please?" She took a deep, deep breath. Her shoulders lifted. "What about the night we kissed in Kansas City, when we were sitting on the hood of my truck, watching the sunset and drinking the carbonated water we confiscated from Rosencrantz? That was a good one. Right? I thought… I mean, not anymore, but…"

"Oh, we had to," he said quickly, holding his knee to his chest again. But he would not look at her. His fingers itched behind his ear. "That one, um… Yeah, no, uh… Th-that one doesn't count either."

"It doesn't?" She pictured his startled face when she'd grabbed his hands, pulling him forward the one and only time she'd ever initiated it. The one and only time he'd ever agreed to shake Sanderson off their tail. The one and only kiss that hadn't been filed in some weird official research report when they were done. The one and only time she'd ever really felt like he _wanted_ her.

"Mr. Sanderson always said we didn't have a choice. It was all part of the plan, right? Betty, I _swear_ , I wasn't trying to lead you on. It didn't mean anything to me. You _know_ this, remember? Please. You're my best friend, and I never, ever would have kissed you if I didn't have to. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me."

The burning in her face grew brighter. _Ouch_. I mean, sure, she'd always stared in mirrors as she brushed her hair and sighed a bit at how plain her face looked even after she finished applying her makeup, but she had no idea she was _that_ unattractive. And to _Gary,_ of all people. The sweetest boy in town, and her best friend since they were kids.

But looking back on it, was it any surprise that her feelings meant nothing to him? I mean, look at who his mother was. Betty could still pull up the exact way Elaine Cabrera's searing eyes had scanned her when she'd first introduced herself as Gary's friend.

He didn't even like the sunset kiss. She'd worked _hard_ to pull that one off. It had almost rained that day. But it didn't.

Self-consciously, Betty began to scratch her wrist beneath the desk, where he couldn't see. Distracting her mind by redirecting its attention to something physical like that always helped her hold back tears. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"Well-" Gary's cheeks reddened, too. "I thought _neither_ of us was supposed to keep secrets. Why didn't you ever tell me all this stuff about you and Pete moving to Brightburg before now?"

"I don't know! It was just so awkward, or I didn't want to make it awkward…" Betty sighed her frustrations away, pinching the top of her nose. She massaged her eyelids, and they made clicking sounds like polished stones. Her hand dropped back to the desk. "I don't know. I guess we grew up a bit, and kind of grew apart this year without even realizing. I'm sorry, Gary. You've been great, and we can always still be best friends. Always. We just can't hang out together like we used to. Boys and girls just can't _do_ that when they're nineteen if they aren't dating, you know?"

He said nothing. Betty lifted her hand, then realized she was about to reach out and touch his knuckles, the way she used to do before she and Pete had ended up together. She pulled back.

"I'm sorry, Gary. You're _still_ my best friend. But we can't be goofy teenagers babysitting kids in the Learnatorium forever. It's not like you can just freeze time. One day I'm going to grow up. I'll move out. I might even get married."

"To a polar bear." Finally, he let go of his knee and allowed his foot to drop to the ground. He opened the highest drawer of his desk and dropped the _Aladdin_ movies in. He shut it more roughly than usual.

"To a sweet-hearted boy in a polar bear suit. I mean…" Betty grasped one of her pigtails. "Well, maybe? I don't know."

Instantly he was on his feet. His hands went up before his brain seemed to process what he was doing. They squeezed the air. "But that's crazy! If you don't know _absolutely for sure_ that you want to live with Pete forever, how could you want to leave me, your best friend you know and trust, and the apartment where you've lived all your life, and move with him to a strange place with strange job opportunities and strange bills to pay and- and a strange new WiFi password? How could you do this to me if you aren't _absolutely sure?"_

Betty was sitting, her hands in her hair. Gary was standing, one arm around his stomach now. The other hand was pressed into his eye socket. The air sparked.

"It kind of _hurts,"_ he said, and it kind of did.

Betty dropped her hands to her lap, trying too hard not to cry. She'd known it would break him, because he was eighteen years old, and somehow he _still_ couldn't understand that romance mattered more than friendship. Even friendship with a lifelong best friend.

"Yes. I- I realize that. I'm so sorry, Gary. I wish it didn't have to be like this, but it does. I'm a girl. You're a boy. Boys and girls just don't live together if they're nothing more than friends, you know? We live together, and because of that, people think things about us-"

 _"I_ don't think of us like that." Sharp, accusing. "That should matter."

"No, no, of _course_ it matters. Gary, I didn't mean to- to put words in your mouth or accuse you of- er, inappropriate thoughts, or anything. I just- I… I mean, with my anxiety, I can't handle that anymore, all the things people say about us? You understand. I'm actually happy. I just need a new start someplace else, where people will see me differently."

"Living with a different boy in a different apartment. Which is different."

Pause.

"Yes. Working with you at the Learnatorium was really fun while it lasted, but I have dreams for my future, and I'll never get to achieve them if I'm always joined to you at the hip. I want to finish college, I want to be a mom- I can't just drop out of school and run a community center the way you want to, you know?" He was silent, and she sighed and brushed her hair behind her ear. "I love you. You'll always be my best friend. Pete's just…"

"Different," he whispered, aching.

"Well, yeah. Gary…" Her voice softened. "Even if we hadn't ever kissed, you didn't really think we could live together our whole lives without dating, did you?"

He looked at the floor like it was an old memory and shook his head. "No. You like Pete. It's fine. Although tenancy by the entirety would have been nice."

"I… I _chose_ this." She stared into his face, willing him to understand as her shoulders lifted higher. "I'm moving in with Pete because I _want_ to. Not because Mr. Sanderson made us, or anything. This was going to happen eventually. I want to have a boyfriend and raise kids of my own someday. And when I do, you and I can't live together anymore."

"… I know." Gary lowered himself back to his chair. It was slightly too short for his desk. "I'm sorry, Lizzie. I'm not mad that you want kids. Goodness no. No, no, no. Kids are wonderful, and- and you should have them with someone you truly love in a romantic way." When he looked away, he bit his lower lip. "And we both know you and I can't have kids anyway, even if we did get married…"

Betty winced. She'd known about his Klinefelter syndrome since they were eight, and his infertility since seventeen, but neither of them spoke about it much. That was one subject she didn't have a clue how to approach. "Gary, don't. That's not why I'm dating Pete instead of you. Please don't think that! You don't _really_ believe we aren't together just because I want kids, do you?"

He jolted, jerking up his head. "What- no! Of course not! You love Pete like _that_ , and not me. Betty, I'm not clueless. I _get_ it. You two have those kinds of feelings for each other. Of course you lovebirds can have kids when you get married. I've never even wanted kids of my own, especially this soon. I'm not ready for a romantic relationship, but if you are, then that's _great._ I'm not mad! You get you a polar bear boy, Lizzie! As long as it's what you want, I'll be fine. I promise. So, you go marry him and have all the little half-human, half-polar bear cubs you want! But me? Oh, no, I'm not the father type. I have the daycare. That's really enough."

"Well, that's good. Thanks, Gary."

He hesitated, eyes dimming, then played his final card. "I mean, I'm more like a fun uncle than a daddy anyway."

"… Yeah. I'd like that. Really, let's make it happen. And I hope Pete and I can visit you whenever we have the chance." She phrased it carefully, emphasizing the words _visit you_ to keep them something separate from _visit us._

"It'll be great," he said, sprinkling cheerfulness across his voice again. "Don't be afraid to include me in everything. I want your Christmas cards. I want the birthday party invitations. I want to be your emergency contact. We're family."

"Oh, geez." She felt her cheeks warm. "You want to be my emergency contact? Ah. Um. Isn't that a little… intimate?"

"You can't let Pete be your emergency contact," he argued. "Those bear paws have absolutely, positively no dexterity whatsoever."

Betty couldn't help but snort and shake her head with a soft laugh. Although, come to think of it… Who _was_ her emergency contact on file? Surely not Sanderson. Not after he'd left. Right?

Gary's thumb and forefinger pressed together, poised to snap. They broke apart without doing so. His shoulders lifted as he inhaled, very slowly. "Ah, geez! Well, well well. I'm super sorry, Betty! I didn't mean to get snappy. I knew this day was coming, and I thought I was ready for it. I guess I just didn't realize it would be so soon."

She nibbled on her lower lip. "I guess it does seem a little sudden from your perspective, doesn't it? I've been planning this for a little while now, and maybe I didn't realize that, either. I'm sorry too. It wasn't meant to be a secret, and I should have let you know my plans earlier, but I just never knew how to bring it up."

"I get it." Gary leaned forward, chin cupped in his hands. "And I'll miss you. It'll be fine! It'll be great! A whole new world! I'll call you and the lucky man sometimes. But I'll be _totally_ respectful of your boundaries and your personal life. Ooh, this will be a fun new adventure!" His smile started to press back, bright and white and shiny. "You can bring your kids down to the daycare for playdates, and we can hang out every weekend, and when Pete's available to watch the kids then I'll take you out for dinner and ice cream every Sunday-"

"Gary," she interrupted.

The smile froze. He took his hands away. "What?"

"Gary… Listen." Her own hands came together before her nose. Again. She couldn't believe she had to do this to him again, spell it out like this, make it hurt, but he _wasn't getting it._ "I'm so, so sorry. You're my best friend in the world, and I love you for that. I'll always remember everything we've done together, and the great memories we've shared. You're sweet, you're caring, and if you ever get married, then you'll make an amazing partner for a wonderful person."

"Betty?"

"But we're way too close for two people who aren't dating. You can't just be _calling_ me when we grow up, or taking me out to dinner."

"Uh." He tilted his head. "What? We've lived together since we were eight. Except for the kisses that don't count anyway, we're kind of like siblings? Siblings call each other sometimes, or go out to eat."

"Not obsessively. Gary…" Betty blinked. Automatically, she closed her fingers around her pen. "I don't want to hurt you. Please don't make this harder than it is."

"Ah, so sorry! I didn't know I was. I'm just thinking." Gary scratched his head. _Scritch. Scritch._ "Um… Okay. Why the change? You didn't used to talk about a future where we didn't hang out."

Betty stared down at the bills and dented candy balls on her desk again, forcing her eyes to stay open. And dry. After contemplating for a few seconds, she decided to ignore the comment. Giving any sort of mention that last spring, it really had seemed like they'd be together forever, would just be leading him on. That wasn't fair.

"Betty?" An unreadable note crept into Gary's voice. She tightened her grip on the pen and didn't look up. It was difficult enough to see his face in her mind's eye- his eyebrows pressed together, his lower lip curled in with his teeth sunk into the top. She didn't want to see him for real. She didn't need the reminder that she knew him too well. Glory, glory, she knew his body language _so well_. She could imagine every wrinkle on his stupid sweater vest. The slight crook to his bow tie, which always tilted upward on the right side. He leaned further across her desk, his voice very quiet now. "We _are_ going to get to see each other again when we grow up. Aren't we? You'll just be in Brightburg. Right? You said Brightburg. You and Pete aren't planning to slip away from there after a few months in the apartment, right? You're not going to leave there without telling me one day. Are you? This isn't… the end."

Betty's reply struggled in her throat. She began it, then ended it. Tried again, but that failed too. Her eyes closed. "Gary… Gary, listen."

"No," he breathed, slumping forward. His eyelids clenched, his fingers curled.

She knew every freckle on his face, every swish of his tassel, every tuft of ginger hair on his head and arms. She could see him, even with her eyes squeezed tighter than his. Her heart pumped in and out of her throat. "Gary, you're my best friend…"

"No, no, no…"

"You've been nicer to me than I deserve, and you took care of me when even Sanderson couldn't be bothered to. You've always helped me through my panic attacks… my angry moods… my school projects… my tough days at camp… Everything I've ever needed."

"No…"

"But Flappy's gone now. The Learnatorium is on the verge of going under."

He stared at her, lips parted, and Betty stared back and wished she had a way to comfort him. She knew him so well. But maybe not enough.

"I'm sorry, Gary. I don't really know where life will take Pete and I from here. We can see each other sometimes, but I don't want to get your hopes up too much about how much time we'll get to spend together now. I don't want to be tied to Dimmsdale anymore. I want to move on. Especially after we upset so many people this summer. I- I just need to get out of here. You understand. I need to start over. I want to be Elizabeth Lovell now. Not just 'Gary and Betty' said all in one breath, like we're just one person who's never apart. I need to build my own identity."

Gary dropped his gaze to his hands. The clock ticked again. _So you're moving in with someone else, and maybe taking his last name someday soon, because that's definitely a sign of independence,_ echoed in the silence. "Wow," he murmured. "This is happening. You said words. I mean, I get it and I'll support the future you want to have no matter what it is, but I'm really going to miss you. Really, a lot, Betty."

"I'll miss you too."

His voice cracked without apology when he tried to say, "You know, it's actually really funny, isn't it? I mean, I remember back when we were fifteen, you said you didn't want kids?"

Not his kids.

Betty shook her head, shaking back her hair again. "Yeah, when I was _fifteen_. People change, you know?"

"I… can't… relate." Gary splayed his fingers, shoulders rising near his cheeks. His voice shuddered, then caught itself and slowly strengthened. "Okay. Would it be okay if I asked one more question? It's about the plans you and Pete made for your futures."

"Sure. Go ahead."

Gary opened his mouth. No words came out. His eyes stared into Betty's, and she blinked and studied him in honest bewilderment. Knowing Gary, he could ask anything from whether they planned to share the same bedroom to where they planned to buy their groceries or get their homemade bookmarks laminated. What was he thinking about?

He closed his mouth again, and squeezed his eyes shut. "Never mind."

"No, no, go ahead. Seriously, ask me anything." Betty's heart fluttered against the insides of her lips, but she refused to leave her friend hanging and broken like this. He deserved this; they both needed this, this closure. If she had to chase him down and tackle him in order to get him to open up about his feelings, then so be it.

"No," he said. "Never mind."

"… Oh." She stared at him, with nothing to say. She didn't tackle him.

"Actually, Betty? Something else?"

Why wouldn't he look at her? His gaze was on his knuckles, his brow furrowed like a farm. "What?" she asked.

Gary swallowed with a stagger in his throat. "Have you… ever fallen out of love with someone after liking them for too long?"

"Well." Betty thought about it for a moment. "Sure. Loads of times. That one boy, Gregory. Cute camp kids. Cute basketball players on the high school team. Some of your biker friends. Chip Skylark."

 _You._

She cleared her throat. "I mean, crushes wear off, you know?"

Then he did raise his head. "Why doesn't that happen when you fall in love for real?"

Betty paused.

The longer the pause went on, the more alarm spread across Gary's face.

"Well. See." She had to be very careful. "It… does. That's just what happens when you get to know someone, and the excitement of a new relationship finally dies away. I mean, attraction isn't supposed to last forever. It doesn't work like that. Like, Pete and I both expect to stop feeling attracted to each other someday, but we've talked about it, and right now we're planning to stay together for the long haul anyway, like best friends. That's just what you do with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, I guess. The difference between random passing crushes and a serious long-term partner is just that mutual commitment."

"I'm sorry," Gary blurted, apologizing for nothing, and Betty cringed for no reason at all. His palm raced to his cheek, pressing deeper than ever before. "I- I just want you to be sure. I mean, Pete will be good for you. You're a numbers person, he's a science guy. You like decorating indoors and he likes working outside with plants. It'll work out. This is great. He's great, and this will be so great for both of you, but it's still weird to imagine you marrying him. I didn't really think you would."

Betty put up her hands. "We're not getting married anytime soon. I didn't mean _that_ kind of commitment. I mean, there's not really any point in getting married, is there? Marriage ceremonies are super duper stressful, expensive, and a pointless waste of money. I don't want anyone looking at me thinking I'm one of those typical reckless girls desperate to get a ring. It's not as though I have family I want to invite. I wouldn't even know who to pick for bridesmaids. And trying to cater to both my vegan diet and Pete's carnivorous one? Sure, a wedding might make you feel special for an afternoon, but pizza and a movie would do that for me too. And if I don't get married, I won't have to be in front of everybody spouting cliché lines I get fed either. I dunno. Pete and I've talked about it a lot lately. I just don't think marriage is a smart move right now."

Gary blinked. "You're _not_ getting married? But I also thought you really, really wanted your own kids?"

"I do! Pete and I are just going to take a bit of time to settle in first, and-" She couldn't look at him anymore. Her gaze dropped, but the heat in her cheeks rose. "Well, we'll see where it goes from there. I don't know- Maybe we'll change our minds and get married first, but I just don't know." (They wouldn't- Pete was a planner almost to a fault, and they'd agreed to save money for world travel, since neither had ever bought into society's idea that they needed a fancy ceremonial dance and pretty colors or a special day each year to validate their feelings for each other). Betty tightened her fingers over the knuckles on her other hand. "His family is pretty understanding. And it's not like Sanderson cares. He'd probably be thrilled to see me managing my resources this well."

"Ah. Well…" Gary smiled, folding his arms. "Sure! That'll be fun. Kids are great. I mean, I still don't need any of my own, but you know I love kids. And you and Pete have so much more experience working with them than most parents, probably! You'll be a great mom and dad."

"Thanks." She smiled, too. "I hope so. It won't be for a few years still, but I promise, you'll be the first one to get a birth announcement. Even before Pete's mom. I'll make sure of it."

"I'd love that! I mean, if she's really okay with it. I don't want to overstep."

"No, no, it'll be perfect. And I'm really happy about where my life is going right now. I promise."

Gary nodded. They lapsed into pleasant, thoughtful quiet for a moment. After a few seconds, he stuck out his tongue. Not in a mean way. Just in a 'Gary being Gary' way. "Well… So, that. You know, as long as Pete takes the bear mask off when you kiss, I'm happy for you. I swear. It's your life, so you being happy is really all that matters."

 _I guess._

Betty tilted her head. "You're really going to miss me, aren't you?" Even though they'd sort-of almost dated once and sort-of almost broken up? Even though she'd hurt him?

"Of course." Soft with caution. Gary glanced down. His hand went to his pocket, and he brought out his wallet. Plucking out his silver debit card, he stared at it as though seeking answers from his warbled reflection. His shoulders slumped. "I mean, we've lived together since we were eight. I knew it couldn't last forever, but that doesn't mean it's easy. At least I know Pete's… nice."

"Yeah. He is."

Grimacing, Gary returned the card to his wallet. "Yeah. I've seen the way he looks at you- with the mask on, at least. It'll be great. He's great for you. It's so great."

Pause. Betty fidgeted her hands, and looked down.

She didn't normally do this. At least not when they weren't out singing and dancing for the kids. Especially now that she was dating Pete. The office was a strange sliver between worlds where lines blurred and her hesitations crept into her throat.

She didn't like Gary like that, at least not anymore, and she didn't want to lead him on. Because _this right here_ was exactly the type of situation she'd been trying to avoid. But for one brief, cautious moment, Betty got up and walked around to his side of the desk, and held out her arms for a hug. Gary blinked up at her, and rose to his feet. His eyes were turning red again, his nose threatening to sniffle. He hesitated another few seconds, then threw his arms around her and pulled her in so fast, it would have knocked her graduation cap to the floor if she'd still been wearing it. Betty almost gave a muffled yelp, but managed to smother it in time. Gary needed a moment, and if she let him hear her, he'd make himself stop. For her.

"I'll miss you too," she said into his shoulder.

Gary leaned his forehead against hers, and held her as though he never wanted to let go. Betty made sure that when she hugged him back, she squeezed, because he'd been her best friend since forever, and she wasn't sure she'd ever get another chance to show him how much that meant to her, even if things had to be this way. Then hot tears fell against her eyelashes. Betty looked up in surprise, because she couldn't remember Gary ever crying since…

… did she remember ever seeing Gary cry? He was sensitive, but not _that_ kind of sensitive. She frowned, struggling through her muddled memories. There was maybe one time, long ago…

"I'm sorry," he choked out, pressing his face into her hair. His fingers curled into the back of her shirt. "Please don't hate me. I didn't mean to be a soppy-sob. Really! I'm sorry I'm crying. I'm not doing this on p-purpose."

"It's fine, really."

"No, it's not. I shouldn't cry. It's wrong. It's emotion. Boys… don't cry…? I keep doing it. Oh, goodness. I- I'm not very good at being tough, am I?" He gulped. "S-stupid extra chromosome- I'm sorry- I know I sh-shouldn't cry on your head…"

"Gary," she murmured, placing her palm against his cheek. He squeezed his eyelids tighter, and hugged her closer. "Shh. It's okay. There's nothing wrong with crying when you're sad. It's okay."

He shook his head as though he didn't believe her. Betty wished she knew what to say to him. Gary had comforted her through dozens of anxiety attacks over the decade they'd grown up together, because that was just the type of thing he was good at. But emotions were difficult for her, and her fear of saying the wrong thing paralyzed her from saying anything at all. So she waited the uncomfortable moment out by patting him gingerly on the back as he fell dry and silent once again.

They pulled apart. Betty held him away by the shoulders, and forced herself to smile. "Hey, you said you'd be happy as long as Pete takes off the bear mask when I kiss him, right? Well, I know just how to relieve _that_ worry! I promise, I actually did see him without it once, so I can assure you, he actually is human inside, and he doesn't actually wear the polar bear suit all day. And as soon as I can lure him out of it long enough to snap a picture, I'll prove it to you."

"Human? You don't know that!" And with an almost-laugh leaking into his voice, Gary flattened his hands against his cheeks. "Why, for all we know, we could have passed him on the street every day without saying 'Hi!'"

Betty chuckled, her arms relaxing, and it was good and familiar. She sat down again, and crossed one leg over the other. "Slow down, buddy. You know how friendly Pete is. Of course he'd say 'Hi' if he saw you out and about."

"Unless he was waiting for me to say 'Hi' first. Betty, I could have offended him! What have I done?" The dramatic wrist, fingers flared, pressed against his forehead. His tears were mostly gone now. "Oh, what have I done?"

"There's more to Pete than the fact that he wears a polar bear suit to work, Gary."

"Is there, though?"

The familiar bear paw knock sounded at the door again. Betty turned. "See, that's him now. Come in!"

This time when Pete opened the door, he wasn't also holding a squirming child. He pressed himself against one side of the doorway and lifted his knee to block someone behind him from squeezing through. Gary flung both arms in his direction. _See?_

Okay, maybe the whole polar-bear-suit-in-July thing was a _little_ weird.

Pete stretched his paw against the doorframe. "I'm so sorry to interrupt you fellas again, but Mr. Leadly-"

"Ugh!" Betty put back her head, her smile souring instantly. "I cannot even believe that guy. He is _not_ an ideal friend. Tell him I'm in a meeting."

"Um." Pete glanced down at his leg. "He's here."

A short man dressed in yellow, topped with a splash of black hair like the graphite on a pencil, stepped out from behind him and smirked. Of course. Edward P. Leadly Jr., CEO of Pencil Nexus on the other side of the city, stood right there with a clipboard and checkbook in hand and a tape measure clipped to his belt. Behind him lingered a young girl almost as large as he was, wearing a striped blue sweater and an enormous white bow tie around her neck. She wore a sky blue backpack, and in her hands she cradled a bouquet of red roses with purple-black leaves.

"I brought a gift," Leadly said, pointing to his daughter.

Betty was back on her feet at once. "What are you doing here?" she seethed, emphasis on each word individually and yet all of the above. Despite the roasting late-summer heat, _now_ she wished she was in her sweater vest. Or at least her undershirt. The tank top suddenly made her feel so exposed.

Ed Leadly had the nerve to grin. "Lovely day to spend with you too, Longhurst. Or was it Lenderman…?"

 _"Lovell."_

He shrugged. "Lovely Lovell. You can't blame me for forgetting a name like that. Well, you see, as you neglected to return my calls, I took the liberty to visit you in person on my own dime. I have an offer here you won't want to refuse."

She knew Gary well enough to sense him wrinkling his nose behind her. Betty's heart thudded with secondhand embarrassment. Oh, perfect. Here she was, trying to argue in favor of selling the Learnatorium, and Leadly had to go make an idiot of himself by behaving like, well… _this_. Her teeth clenched. "I'm in a meeting."

"And I'm sure your boyfriend over there will very much appreciate the way you make it up to him later."

"I'm not dating her," Gary choked out, at the same time Pete growled, "He isn't her boyfriend," and Betty confirmed it herself. She folded her arms.

"Thank you, Pete. I'll handle this. Please keep an eye on the kids and ensure they're following today's schedule. Gary and I will be there as soon as we can."

Pete nodded and left. Good. It would be just like Leadly to lure every employee available away from the children and then report the Learnatorium for negligence for failing to monitor them. To Leadly, Betty said, "Gary is my business partner, and is every inch the owner of the Learnatorium as I am. If you're hoping to buy from us, it would be in your best interest to recognize and respect that. I also hope you realize your behavior is highly unprofessional."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tiny smile break across Gary's face. His cringing posture grew a little straighter, a little more confident in her presence. Silently, Betty thanked him for that. Leadly was a slimeball on his best days, and an absolute snotball on his worst. He had caught her on the walk home just last week, when stomach cramps had sent her home and Gary had stayed behind an extra hour to finish cleaning and locking up. Leadly had badgered her the whole way to sell the Learnatorium, trying to barter with more and more creative types of currency.

If she had to face him again without Gary by her side, her anxious tongue would have betrayed her already. Separately, she knew, neither she nor Gary were particularly confident (or wholly competent) about the Learnatorium's inner workings and legal tentacles. But together, they could hold their ground well enough to get by. The thing was, they didn't actually have to _be_ intimidating enough to scare Leadly off. They just had to fool him into thinking they were.

Leadly chuckled. "Well, you know what they say: When two business partners always agree, one of them is unnecessary. William Wrigley Jr."

That pierced her between the ribs. There was no way to answer a challenge like that. Not here. Not now. Creamy silence fell. Betty looked at Gary. He looked at her. They looked away at the same time.

"Betty's right," Gary said anyway, taking two steps forward. He folded his arms behind his back, fingers curling into their usual ready-to-snap position, all tense and shaking. "F-Flappy Bob left the Learnatorium to both of us. We're equal partners, and… you're only hurting yourself if you try to break us up."

Ed Leadly made no attempt to hide his rolling eyes. "Partners, eh? No denying that Robert had more faith in your pure little teenage hearts than I do. Office door's got a lock and everything."

Gary flinched. Betty was so taken aback by Leadly's underlying implication that all she could do was blink. But not having a comeback was almost worth it for the shocked look of horror that crossed the face of the man's daughter as she turned and gaped up at him. The look was gone a second later, the girl's eyes dropping to the floor, but the expression offered Betty just enough hope to stand her ground. Leadly's utter lack of disrespect for the gentle, tender nature of her and Gary's friendship ruffled thicker feathers than she'd realized she had.

"Those are some very nice flowers," she said, addressing the child instead of Leadly. Hadley, wasn't it? Betty was almost positive her name was Hadley Leadly. "Are those for us?"

Hadley glanced up again, and carefully held out the red and black bouquet for Betty to take. They were wrapped haphazardly in parchment paper, their stems dry and clumsily cut. "Blood blossoms. Special, from my mom's garden."

Blood blossoms. The name was familiar… though Betty couldn't seem to remember why. Something she'd heard in history class long ago, perhaps…

Leadly patted his daughter on the shoulder. "They're good luck. Used during the Creature Wars to keep the Ghosts away. I figured that one way or another, they'd be useful here."

"Because they're an aphrodisiac?" Gary asked in an uncharacteristically flat way.

"That's just what they want you to think," Leadly muttered, watching Betty set the flowers on her desk. "They weren't doing anything for me."

Hadley slapped a hand against her face and let it stay there. In the brief silence that settled on the room, Betty frowned at the dark flowers. Wait. She _did_ remember where she knew them from. Dimmsdale's founding day parade. The younger children were always tasked to lay blood blossoms beside Alden Bitterroot's wishing well as they passed it by. Something about the proper burial for an evil witch, although local legend claimed Alden wasn't really dead.

What an… interesting choice of gift for Leadly to show up with now. They were certainly pretty, but the implication was beyond disturbing. Whether they were intended to convey a message of good luck or not. Betty shivered, giving her head a strong shake in the process. Turning back, she said, "Right. Well, I'm just as super-duper pumped about the upcoming plans Gary and I have for the Learnatorium as you are, _buuut!_ I'm afraid we aren't interested in selling it all today."

Gary jerked his head in a nod. "Ooh, yes! Why, Betty and I must have talked for _hours_ , but we haven't finished discussing our thoughts _juuust_ yet. You'll need to be patient a little bit longer until we're ready to reveal our decision to the public, Mr. Leadly."

"Exactly right! Thanks for stopping by, sir." _Don't come back._ "Good. Day."

"Thoughts?" Leadly sounded honestly incredulous. The light of challenge gleamed in his eyes, side by side with the thrill of the chase. All of this was just a game. He tugged on the open halves of his coat. "You want to _think?_ You don't need to think about it! I'm here, I'm offering, this is the finest price you're guaranteed to get, so let's get the paperwork signed so I can move in by tonight. Preferably _before_ you have the chance to hide what you've all been up to in here for all these years."

"Nothing's up," Gary protested, clasping his hands more tightly behind his back. His eyes flitted over to Betty, awaiting her support. She didn't have any.

With a soft chuckle, Leadly turned back to his daughter, who had already busied her hands with a stuffed bluebird she'd pulled out from somewhere. He placed his own hands on his knees. "Run down to the end of the hall, hon. I need you to act as a baseline for my compass so gingerbaby over here doesn't set it off."

"His name is Gary," Betty said, stepping around her desk.

Hadley didn't move. "You said we were just here to pick up Ruby so we can all get shaved ice together."

Her father gave her two pats on the headband that kept back her red-brown hair. "Of course, sweetie pie. Daddy just needs to take care of a little something extra first. Daddy likes to multitask when he goes out to save on gas."

"Dad," she hissed, staring at the carpet, "you're embarrassing me. Can I _please_ just wait in the car?"

Leadly sighed. He reached into an inner pocket of his yellow coat and drew out a small bit of shiny black metal and plastic. This, he dropped into her palm. "Tell you what, angel. Why don't you go find your friend in the play area, and you come tell me if this little doodad starts beeping before you get there."

"What's that?" Betty snapped. Forcing herself forward suddenly became a breeze. She put out her hand. "All outside devices are subject to be searched and possibly confiscated upon entry."

Hadley hesitated, glancing at her father. Leadly stared at Betty in mock delight, already gripping the two sides of his coat again. "Oh, so _now_ you want to talk to me. Well! Heh heh. I'm so glad you asked. I picked this up from a friend of mine." Taking the compass from Hadley's hand, he held it out to Betty. "It's a fascinating little device that points out the direction of magic. I can't imagine" - here he raised his voice - "that anyone in here would object to me having this?"

"He's trying to prove a point about the existence of fairy godparents to Crocker," Gary told Betty, calm and patient. He caught her eye, and rolled his own very slightly to emphasize the ridiculous silliness of their town's wacky old men.

Okay, sure. Whatever. That sounded reasonable, probably. "Let me see it," Betty said, still stretching out her hand for the compass. "If it does exactly what you say it does, then there shouldn't be a problem if I'm the one who holds it during our tour."

Hadley mouthed _"Tour?"_ with a look of horror, as though her father hadn't warned her to expect a dull and boring visit. Well, maybe she'd like the trapeze. When Betty had left the previous night, Gary had been setting it up to perfection.

"Fair, fair." Leadly raised his hands, palms facing forward. He kept his fingers around the compass. "I just want you to know that I'm serious when I tell you I'll pay more for this sorry hill than whatever it is that Dimmadome is offering you. Like I told _Gary_ just two weeks back, Ellie is a maniac who'd love to tear apart whatever fantastic creatures you're harboring in here, and Denzel can't afford this place what with that useless portal to Fairy World he's building-"

"Crocker's what?" Gary interrupted. Leadly broke off, puzzled, and Betty turned to to find Gary standing with his arms still folded. His hips were slightly pushed to one side, and a very peculiar tilt now captivated his head. The tassel on his cap fluttered like a leaf. He pressed his lips together. "You said that before too, at our apartment, just before you walked out. Denzel Crocker's built a portal to Fairy World."

"It's junk," Leadly said, a note of suspicion flickering around his voice. He tucked the compass back into his pocket. "Saw it myself two weeks ago, and it was a waste of good money to build, which is my point. Poor sap thinks it can take him straight to Fairy World's capital city once it's done. The man's gone hoony bonkers, if you ask me, and now he's clawing for cash. Couldn't even afford the last few kabobs he says he needs to even rev it up. Well, that's a teacher's salary for you."

Gary nodded very, very slowly. "So it gets you to Fairy World through scientific technology. Not magic. Ooh, now that's really, really interesting."

Leadly raised his hands, then let them drop. "Wouldn't trust _my_ life with anything that lunatic's slapped together anyway. When I left him, he was babbling on and on about aliens. I'm telling you, he's a walnut."

"Hmm," Gary said, thoughtfully.

Despite her frustrations, Betty couldn't keep back a small smile. "Oh, Mr. Crocker lost his mind long before Gary and I were in his fifth grade class. Believe you me, even back then he was always going off about" - and here she put on her best twitching, yelping Crocker impression - _"FAIRY GODPARENTS!"_

Hadley raised her eyebrows. "That was pretty good."

"Thanks! You pick it up pretty quick, hanging around him."

"Never had him myself," Hadley said, cocking her head, "but I've heard a lot of stories. Being in middle school all the way across town is a blessing in disguise."

Gary turned his full attention back on Mr. Leadly then, and smiled the first genuine smile Betty had ever seen him give the man. "Ooh, would you mind stepping out for just one teensy-weensy moment, Mr. Leadly, sir? I was just about to grab lunch, and I'd just like to wrap up the last loose threads of the conversation Betty and I were having, if you would be so goshdarn kind. I'm sure she'll happily take you on your tour as soon as she has a moment to collect herself. In the meantime, perhaps you could find Pete and go about the check-out process of picking up Ruby?"

"Well, uh… Um…" Leadly blinked twice. He took the sides of his yellow coat in his hands, and Hadley tugged hopefully on his arm. Gary kept his smile bright.

"I'll bring back anything for you that you like, sir. Hadley too. My treat. _Aaand_ when I return with all our yummy food, I'm sure we could have a very nice discussion about all our plans for the Learnatorium's future… and exactly what price I for one would be willing to let it go for."

Betty threw Gary a sideways glance, but she didn't protest. Strangely, he didn't sound upset about the idea. Honest cheer danced around his words.

"Heh." Leadly tugged his coat once, then allowed his hand to drop back and slip into Hadley's. "Well, I knew you'd come around eventually, Cavatina. I always get what I want."

"Cabrera," Betty corrected. "It's Gary Cabrera."

"Oh, no harm done," Gary said, placing his arm behind Leadly's shoulders. He walked the short man the equally short distance to the office door, never losing his lightness for a second. Oh. Betty hadn't realized just how badly she _missed_ that fluttery cheer of his. _That_ was the Gary she remembered from the previous spring, delightful and patient and as charming as a prince. "Yes sir, just one moment, please, and we'll be with you shortly!"

Leadly let out a satisfied grunt, and didn't protest when Gary shut the door behind him. Gary chuckled, and whisper-sang the words, _"In my world of pink, not gray."_

"Clever distraction," Betty observed, folding her arms behind her back, "but I don't think you've bought us much time."

When Gary turned around, he was still smiling, just like in the good old days. "Oh, that's not a problem. I really don't need much of it. There's just something on my mind I really want to say, but not in front of him. Okay. Betty, did you mean it when you said you were happier now than you were a year ago?"

"Of course!" The question itself was puzzling, and so was the act of him asking her if she was being honest with him. "Last year I was riddled with anxiety every passing day, and crying myself to sleep through most of it. But now Pete and I are hoping to leave Dimmsdale behind for good, and I'm about to start a brand new life with a soft, sweet boyfriend I truly love, and who loves me too. I'm happier now than I remember ever being in my life, and I wouldn't change that for anything."

His smile faltered. A lot. He looked away. But then, glancing at her again, he pushed it back into place. "Well, um. Ooh. Oh geez, that makes this awkward. Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? Because I'm trying to help."

 _Trying too hard,_ she thought affectionately, watching the desperation burst like fireworks deep within his eyes. Poor, silly boy, always wishing he could be her knight in fluffy pink armor. She couldn't help the playful note that slipped into her voice as she eyeballed her best friend and asked, "What exactly are you thinking about?"

"Oh." He rolled his eyes and hummed a few distressed bars of a song she didn't recognize. "Nothing much. Just this: You know, I suddenly don't think selling the Learnatorium will be so bad after all."

Betty's eyebrows arched. "What?"

"If it means we don't have to deal with that sleazey weasel being a constant badger," Gary hurried to explain, placing one fist behind his hip. With his other hand, he swept the bouquet of blood blossoms off their desks and into the trash can. _Thump._ He gave his wrist a shake, wincing where he must have pricked it on a thorn. "You know, I hate, hate, _hate_ giving up on my hopes and dreams for a Dimmsdale Community Center, but I'm afraid we're just all going to have to deal with it. Who knows? Maybe Leadly will still allow me to work here, if I make him think I'm useful!"

Betty shook her head, pressing her fingertips against his desk. "Gary, a moment ago you were absolutely opposed to this."

"Ooh, persuasive, isn't he?"

"I don't know… I mean, of course I _want_ to sell, but… Are you sure this is what you want? Don't let him bully you into it. We can wait… Maybe we _should_ wait."

"Think about it," he offered, bracing his hands on either side of the last moon core candies. He leaned forward, smiling, smiling, _smiling_ the way she hadn't seen him smile in weeks. Pure, blissful smile. Then he whipped out his shiny silver debit card with the strange dotted _P_ logo on it, and tossed it in the air. "If you think you can handle being in the same room as that deep creep for a little while longer, you have my _full_ permission to talk to him about money and plans. I'll pop out to Extreme Veggiedanger and pick up lunch. You can let me know how you feel as soon as I get back, okay?"

Betty found herself wavering again. "I don't want to be pushed… Dimmadome's been more respectful, less… forward… I want this to be _our_ decision. Together."

"Ah." Gary shrugged. He straightened up again, and popped one last moon core into his mouth. Behind the hand that held his debit card, he said, "Think about it. We'll talk when I get back, okay? You know, from lunch. I'm just trying to help you be as happy as you can. You know that, right?"

The big softie. Betty folded her arms. "Pete and I won't leave for Brightburg until I know you've found some new work," she said, firmly. Everyone would have to agree with that, like it or not. Gary was her best friend, and that's just how it was. She lifted her chin. "I want to be sure you're spending time pursuing goals that will truly make you happy, too."

Gary laughed. He laughed, and laughed. It was the beautiful laugh of a winged dream taking flight. Leaning forward, he squeezed himself in a hug. His fingers clenched the debit card until they turned pink. "Ha! You know what's super-duper funny about all this, Lizzie? Suddenly, I don't think that will be a problem at all!"

* * *

 **A/N** \- And this, my friends, is where we break. You've made it through 50 chapters. Wow! We are _almost_ halfway there.

The 130 Prompts is now going on **hiatus** until October 2019 because I need a breather, but I'll see you crazy kids back here when it's over. Did I end on a good one? Speculate and take sides with our pals up there all you will. That's what moral gray zones were meant for. And if you're craving more Gary and Betty history, also consider checking out my backstory 'fic for them, _Pink and Gray._

And while I have you here, I'd like you guys to know that I have created an **AO3** account (also named FountainPenguin), and all my FOP 'fics can be found there if you would prefer to read on that site. On AO3, the 130 Prompts are each posted individually, and not in a single 'fic. Instead, you can read each arc straight through in chronological order (Check the "series" tab on my AO3 page for more information). I _don't_ recommend doing that on your first read through the Prompts since I am actually posting them in the order I am for a reason. But, once you've completed the series and are confident that you know my worldbuilding and the other plot arcs well enough to get by, that would be a great place to read an entire arc in chronological order, should you ever choose to.

Feel free to stay on FFN or use AO3 if you prefer. Remember that I update Tuesday mornings, and you can also keep an eye on my Tumblr (FountainPenguin) if you'd prefer to be alerted to 'fic updates there. Thanks, team! I'd love to read your thoughts on ANY of the Prompts you've read so far at ANY time, so feel free to review!


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